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Appendix 6: Colonial Legislation Regarding Convicts
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Appendix 6: colonial legislation regarding convicts 1. An Act to Prevent the great Evils Arising by the importation of convicts into This Province and for the better discovery of such When imported (1723). The preamble to the act states: Whereas the great number of convicts of late years imported into this province have not only committed several murders, burglaries and other felonies, but debauched the minds and principles of several of the ignorant and formerly innocent inhabitants thereof, so far as to induce them to commit severalofthelikecrimes ,theperpetrationwhereofarenowbecomesocommon and frequent that honest people are very insecure in their lives or properties; and whereas the greater part of the magistrates’ time is taken up in the trial and prosecution of the said convicts and their proselytes to the great delay of all civil business and the insupportable expense of the country which evils are in great measure occasioned by the masters, or owners of such convicts not taking care to keep them within due bounds and restraining them from injuring their neighbours, for remedy thereof . . .1 2. An Act to Prevent the Abuses of concealing convicted Felons and other offendersimportedintoThisProvinceandforthebetterdiscoveryofThem (1728). The preamble to this act, after quoting those parts of 4 geo. i, c. 11; and 6 geo. i, c. 23 relating to the transportation of felons, states: Masters of vessels importing felons and offenders have neglected to bring testimonials of the offences whereof the said felons and offenders have been convicted whereby it might appear whether they were obliged to serve seven or fourteen years which hath already occasioned disputes between the persons entitled to the service of the felons and the felons themselves concerning their term of servitude; and several other masters of ships have imported felons and then made private contracts with them for less time of servitude than their sentence required and then disposed of these felons as people of 170 / Appendix 6 good repute . . . by which practices these felons and offenders, whose testimony ought not to be received in a court of record, or before any magistrate , because not known as such, may be received as witnesses to the manifest danger of the laws, liberties and properties of his Majestie’s subjects of this Province.2 3. An Act to Make the testimony of convicted Persons legal against convicted Persons (1751). The preamble to this act stridently asserts: Murders, burglaries and other felonies and offences have been so frequent of late that the lives and properties of his Majesty’s subjects within this Province are become precarious: which offences have been generally committed by convicts imported into this Province and such as they induce to join with them in their wicked practices; and which crimes the said convicts are encouraged to perpetrate because they know that they are disabled from being witnesses against each other as the law now stands.3 ...