That is one of the reasons why France will never make a real living colony out of New Caledonia until its present criminal and semi-criminal population has utterly7 died out—a contingency8 which is not likely to come to pass while French rule in the Pacific endures. The Frenchman cannot colonise, although, curiously9 enough, under another flag he can become a most excellent colonist10. Take him away from France and plant him, as in New Caledonia, under the tricolour and under the care of his all too paternal11, perhaps it would be more correct to say maternal12 government, and, whether bond or free, he begins to get homesick, and a homesick man is the last person on earth to begin colony-making.
[85]
Of course, if you take him out in a convict transport and plant him on an island as a prisoner you can make a colonist of a sort out of him, and that is the sort you find in New Caledonia, a human machine whose initiative, if he ever had any, has been ground out of him, not so much by prison discipline, for that, as I shall show, is indulgent to a degree that would be quite incomprehensible in England; but, rather, by a rigid13 system of supervision14 which permits him to do nothing for himself, which provides everything for him from the plough with which he breaks the virgin15 soil of his concession16 to the prize which he gets for a well-raised crop. Such a man walks on crutches17 all his life, and a colonist on crutches is an entirely18 hopeless, if not a quite impossible, person.
An experience of something over forty years has convinced all the most intelligent students of the question, that the convict civilisation19 of New Caledonia is a dream the realisation of which is made impossible by the conditions of the system itself.
During my last conversation with the Director of the Penal Administration, he asked me what I thought of the social conditions of the island, and[86] the possibility of sometime transforming it from a penal settlement into a free colony? He was intensely in earnest on the subject. He believed, or at least he did his best to believe, in the future of that beautiful native land of his, and I would have encouraged him in his loyal belief if I could have done so; but I had seen too much of real colonisation in many lands to be able to do that honestly, and so what I told him was this:
“Noumea is the heart of New Caledonia, as Paris is the heart of France. The greater part of it is founded upon what was once a miasmatic20 swamp, and, no matter what you do, the poison-germs will find their way to the surface, and pollute the atmosphere that you breathe. That is a concrete likeness21 of your society. It is based on a substratum of crime. For forty years the poison-germs of the mental disease which is called crime have been rising from your lowest social stratum22 and permeating23 all the others.”
A Lake in the interior of New Caledonia.
He saw the justice of the parallel, and he tacitly admitted that the source of moral contagion24 was every whit25 as deeply rooted and as irremovable as the buried swamp that lies deep down beneath the[87] palms and the flamboyants which shade the squares and the gardens of Noumea.
In Australia the matter was different. In the bad, old days men and women were shipped over seas for offences which would not earn fourteen days’ hard labour now, and the majority of them were morally and physically26 sound. Moreover, they were Anglo-Saxons. They knew how to tackle the wilderness27 and subdue28 it, and when they won their freedom they mixed freely with freemen, and, in due course, the wilderness got subdued29, and the new nations got started. That was because there was a maximum of individual initiative, and a minimum of government control which made it possible for the man to work out his own moral and social redemption, and at the same time to shape a country for his children to dwell in. When I first went to Australia as a lad in the deck-house of a limejuicer, the letters M.L.A. didn’t only mean Member of the Legislative30 Assembly. Sometimes they meant Mustn’t Leave Australia; but to-day the penal settlements of fifty years ago are federated nations. Caledonia is still a convict settlement, and such it must remain until the last drop of convict blood within its confines solidifies31 in the veins32 of its last[88] dead criminal, or until its moral and social swamp is drained and purified by more drastic measures than its present rulers appear to have dreamt of.
For the last decade or so the French Government has been doing its best to induce French peasants, artisans, and small tradesmen and manufacturers to go out to New Caledonia as agricultural and industrial colonists33. It has given them free passages, land for nothing, free mining concessions34, and even capital to start on, but, in spite all of these advantages and, perhaps, partly because of them, free colonisation has not been a success in New Caledonia. The causes of this failure are not very far to seek, and some of them are exactly the same as those which operate against the success of German colonies.
The first of them is the Functionary35. New Caledonia is perhaps the most over-governed place in the whole world. The Australian colonies are beginning to suffer from over-government, the natural result of a too triumphant36 democracy, but there, as elsewhere under the British flag, it is still possible for the pioneer to fight his own battle for home and fortune against the Spirit of the Wilderness with no more governmental interference than[89] is necessary to enforce obedience37 to the law. It doesn’t matter of what nationality he is, he succeeds or fails by his own strength or weakness.
In a later chapter I shall describe the most marvellously successful piece of cosmopolitan38 colonisation that has ever been accomplished39, an experiment, the success of which completely bears out all that I am reluctantly obliged to say here against the French system.
From the moment that the Frenchman, whether peasant or artisan, leaves his native land to become a colonist in an oversea French possession he has a functionary in front of him, one on each hand, and one behind him. This is to ensure that he shall go along the dead straight line which governmental wisdom has drawn40 for him. The man in front prevents him going too fast, and the one behind sees that his footsteps to fortune do not fall behind the regulation pace. When he lands in the colony, his first task is to master more or less imperfectly the vast mass of regulations by which all his comings and goings are ordered. Within the sphere of action allotted42 to him everything is already cut and dried. To be original is to transgress43 the code and to trample44 on the[90] official corns of a functionary. Wherefore, he very soon finds that originality45 is at a heavy discount, and a colonist without originality is of about as much use in a new country as a baby in long clothes. In fact the baby is a more valuable citizen, for he may grow into something which the officially conducted colonist never will.
Then there is that fatal convict question. In the following pages I have shown that in New Caledonia there are three classes into which the criminal population of New Caledonia is rigidly46 divided. First, there is the for?at, or convict proper, the man who has been sentenced to a definite term of transportation, ranging from eight years to life. The second class is composed of relégués who have been banished47 to New Caledonia for life, not for any particular crime, but because, by an accumulation of offences, they have proved themselves to be hopeless criminals, and therefore unfit for civilised society and incapable48 of bearing the burden of responsibility which is inseparable from freedom. The third class is composed of the libérés. We have no counterpart to the libéré in our criminal system. The nearest English analogue49 to him is the convict released on license50, but the[91] only real likeness between them is the fact that they are both responsible for their movements to the police.
In New Caledonia the for?at may become a concessionaire and after that a libéré, or he may become first a collective and then an individual libéré. In the former case he is free to hire himself out for work during the day, but he must return to sleep in barracks. In the latter he is absolutely free within the limits of the colony. Subject to the sanction of the Administration he may engage in any business he pleases.
Many men in this class have done exceedingly well for themselves. Others again have returned to France, of course under government sanction, to present their petition for “rehabilitation.” If this is granted they become freemen, their civil rights are restored to them, and they can either settle down in France or return to the colony. As a rule they choose the latter alternative. The keeper of the canteen where I lived at Prony had done this, and had won his way back not only to citizenship51, but to universal respect.
The relégué has no such hope. He is banished for life and remains52 a well-cared-for slave of the[92] government for the rest of his days. In some rare cases he may regain53 his freedom as a special act of grace, but his civil rights are never restored to him.
These three classes form the real substrata upon which the whole social and official fabric54 of New Caledonian society rests, and it is into such a soil, supersaturated with crime, that the French Government proposes to transplant freemen and women, and make colonists of them. In other words the free emigrant55 to New Caledonia must take his wife and children across thirteen thousand miles of ocean and make a home for them in a land where they will inhale56 the poison-germs of villainy with every breath they breathe. Their servants and their labourers, if they can afford them, will be thieves, swindlers, and assassins. Their sons and daughters will have to work with them, grow up with their children, sit beside them at school, and perhaps some day intermarry with them, for all children of convicts born in New Caledonia are free before the law, and the legal equals of all other children. It is obvious that under such conditions, healthy colonisation is about as impossible as healthy physical life in a colony of lepers.
[93]
Many have tried the experiment and have gone back to France richer in experience and poorer in pocket, and with such tales in their mouths as have justly persuaded their fellow-peasants and artisans that their hard, clean, thrifty57 life in France is infinitely58 better than State-aided contamination in New Caledonia.
Lastly, there is what I may call the commercial reason for failure, which is of course closely connected with the others. Officialism has strangled initiative, and crime has poisoned the sources of social prosperity; wherefore in New Caledonia the French govern, but they do not develop. Nine-tenths of the capital invested in the island is in the hands of British and Australian firms, or is owned by foreigners who have become naturalised French subjects. The French have had possession for half a century of one of the richest islands in the world, yet I am only telling the bare truth when I say that a withdrawal59 of foreign capital would promptly60 bring the colony to bankruptcy61, and that the stoppage of the Australian carrying trade would starve it out in a month. This was clearly proved by the extremities62 to which nearly all the outlying camps were reduced by the[94] interruption of the Coast Service during the plague epidemic63.
Here, for instance, is one example out of many which might be quoted of the extraordinary ineptitude64 of the French colonial official in matters of business. An Anglo-French firm located in Sydney obtained a concession for a term of years to import corn, grind it, and sell the flour at a given price, which was about eight shillings per sack higher than the average of Australian prices. The government objected to the price, but yielded on condition that the firm would buy and grind all the corn raised in the colonies. The firm knew perfectly41 well that all Caledonia would not raise fifty bushels of wheat in as many years, so, of course, they consented, and for the next ten years or so the astute65 partners will go on selling flour to the government and the citizens at a much higher price than they could import it for themselves from Australia.
The whole trade of Noumea, which is the one trading centre of the island, is practically in English or Australian hands, although several large firms trade under French styles. The first essential of a commercial education in New Caledonia is a[95] sojourn66 in Australia, and no French youth has a chance of a good start in a New Caledonian business house unless he can speak and write English. In fact the only people in the colony who do not speak English are the officials of the Administration and the military officers.
During the whole of my wanderings through the convict camps from end to end of the island, I only found one official who could converse67 intelligently in English, and that was the Director himself; and yet you can go into almost any store or office in Noumea and get what you want by asking for it in English.
New Caledonia may, in short, be fairly described as a French penal colony and a commercial dependency of Australia.
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1
galleys
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| n.平底大船，战舰( galley的名词复数 )；（船上或航空器上的）厨房 | |
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banishment
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| n.放逐，驱逐 | |
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hazes
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| n.（烟尘等的）雾霭( haze的名词复数 )；迷蒙；迷糊；（尤指热天引起的）薄雾v.（使）笼罩在薄雾中( haze的第三人称单数 )；戏弄，欺凌（新生等，有时作为加入美国大学生联谊会的条件） | |
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penal
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| adj.刑罚的；刑法上的 | |
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lash
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| v.系牢；鞭打；猛烈抨击；n.鞭打；眼睫毛 | |
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inferno
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| n.火海；地狱般的场所 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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contingency
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| n.意外事件，可能性 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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colonist
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| n.殖民者，移民 | |
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paternal
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| adj.父亲的，像父亲的，父系的，父方的 | |
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maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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supervision
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| n.监督，管理 | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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crutches
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| n.拐杖, 支柱 v.支撑 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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miasmatic
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| adj.毒气的，沼气的 | |
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likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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stratum
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| n.地层，社会阶层 | |
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permeating
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| 弥漫( permeate的现在分词 )； 遍布； 渗入； 渗透 | |
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contagion
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| n.(通过接触的疾病)传染；蔓延 | |
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whit
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| n.一点，丝毫 | |
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physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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subdue
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| vt.制服，使顺从，征服；抑制，克制 | |
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subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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legislative
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| n.立法机构，立法权；adj.立法的，有立法权的 | |
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solidifies
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| （使）成为固体，（使）变硬，（使）变得坚固( solidify的第三人称单数 )； 使团结一致； 充实，巩固； 具体化 | |
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veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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colonists
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| n.殖民地开拓者，移民，殖民地居民( colonist的名词复数 ) | |
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concessions
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| n.（尤指由政府或雇主给予的）特许权( concession的名词复数 )；承认；减价；（在某地的）特许经营权 | |
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functionary
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| n.官员；公职人员 | |
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triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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cosmopolitan
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| adj.世界性的，全世界的，四海为家的，全球的 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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40
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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allotted
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| 分配，拨给，摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43
transgress
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| vt.违反，逾越 | |
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44
trample
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| vt.踩，践踏；无视，伤害，侵犯 | |
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45
originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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46
rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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47
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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49
analogue
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| n.类似物；同源语 | |
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50
license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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51
citizenship
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| n.市民权，公民权，国民的义务(身份) | |
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52
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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53
regain
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| vt.重新获得，收复，恢复 | |
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54
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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55
emigrant
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| adj.移居的，移民的；n.移居外国的人，移民 | |
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56
inhale
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| v.吸入(气体等)，吸(烟) | |
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57
thrifty
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| adj.节俭的；兴旺的；健壮的 | |
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58
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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59
withdrawal
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| n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销 | |
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60
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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61
bankruptcy
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| n.破产；无偿付能力 | |
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62
extremities
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| n.端点( extremity的名词复数 )；尽头；手和足；极窘迫的境地 | |
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63
epidemic
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| n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的 | |
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64
ineptitude
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| n.不适当；愚笨，愚昧的言行 | |
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65
astute
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| adj.机敏的，精明的 | |
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66
sojourn
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| v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留 | |
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67
converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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