ABSTRACT
The cessation of transportation, indeed, would have necessitated a total revision of English criminal jurisprudence and a tremendous increase in the number of gaols in the metropolis. The transportation system was firmly based on the legal and criminological theories of the time. From the eighties of the eighteenth century on, however, the system was subjected to increasing criticism, especially by the utilitarian writers. The foes of the transportation system, recommended the penitentiary system as a better alternative. Mainly responsible for the discontinuation of the system was the increasingly hostile attitude of the colonists. To every rational mind their arguments were vastly more convincing than those of their opponents. The Colonial Reformers, advocating large-scale emigration to the colonies, saw in the continuance of the transportation system only an impediment to the out-flow of free workers because of the bad reputation of a convict-colony in the metropolis.
