2-163 (Original)

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Now, according to my views, this [i.e. licentious state of the press, immorality, etc.] may be for the most attributed to the transportation system. The habit which most of the free contract, of thinking and speaking of and treating the convicts contemptuously, is, by a very natural process, extended to the whole species; and hence the want of respect and deference to others which is so universally manifested. Nor ought this to excite surprise. In the rank of life from which most of them have come, they have been accustomed to an open exhibition of their passions, many of them in the roughest form; comparatively few of them have been trained to the first lesson of refinement, the necessity and habit of civility. [166]
I acknowledge that a contempt for convicts is frequently produced by personal experience of their ingratitude, duplicity, and general depravity; but it is also produced, in part, by the important position into which the great disparity between the classes raises the free, which has a tendency to break down the distinctions conceded in the mother country, and thus to place the whole free population on a nearly equal footing. The contempt thus felt and expressed, which is the active mischief; is returned by the bond by hatred; and hence, as I have already stated, a prejudice of caste is produced, which sets the two classes of the community in hostility to each other. On the other hand, the free, imbued with a notion of their individual importance, forget their relative duties, and are, more or less, claiming superior distinction and consideration.
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