A new set of obligations

With the breakdown of reciprocity, the new economy built on price, supply and demand, took over the job of sharing out resources. What was missing from this new system was the element of absolute interdependence: The privileged classes didn't suffer greatly if those lower down the food chain struggled to survive. 

A hint of mutual obligation remained in the form of noblesse oblige – the belief that people born into a life of privilege had obligations to those less fortunate than themselves. While some customs continued, these did not necessarily help the people who had moved to towns or cities in search of work. Noblesse oblige did extend to charitable works as well, but charitable institutions provided relief under harsh, discouraging and emotionally cold conditions.

If the idea that Kings ruled with God's approval - by divine right - could make sense, it followed that people born to a high social rank also had god’s stamp of approval. If the lower classes had lower life expectancies, or were more likely to engage in criminal activity it was obviously the way they were born – the way God made them.

It was even widely believed by the upper classes that only the lower classes were inherently criminal or base – that higher classes never committed crimes. (Denial is not just a river in Egypt).

Poverty implied a lack of effort or responsibility and was no excuse for crime.

During the reign of King George III, there were as many as 300 offences for which a person might be hanged. A system of reciprocity which once valued everyone to some degree had been replaced by a system in which life was cheap; people had become a commodity rather than an organic part of a living community.

Good behaviour no longer guaranteed subsistence in the new industrial world, while even petty crimes by today’s standards were a one-way ticket to disaster. Prisons overflowed, unable to meet the escalating demand for punishment.

One alternative to hanging people for their crimes was forcing them to join the army or navy. This didn’t help reduce the prison population very much in between wars because even officers who had paid for their place in the higher ranks of the army or navy could find themselves unemployed. When there was some ‘war work’ around, officers didn't want the discipline problems caused by having convicts forced into their companies. A further complication was that military service was a business – no one wanted to share the spoils of war with unreliable soldiers or sailors who were criminals. The prison population kept growing.

For a while, convicts were shipped to America where they might be auctioned alongside black slaves, but convicts did not fetch the price slaves could: Unlike slaves, convicts had to be freed after serving their sentences, and their offspring did not become assets.

After the American Revolution, and after some dismal attempts to export convicts to Africa, England finally settled on Australia as the dumping ground for those it didn't want - primarily convicts, and members of the upper classes who were an embarrassment to their families.

In Australia, as in America, the competition with indigenous peoples for land was fierce. In former colonies all over the world, settlers fought the indigenous peoples and the indigenous peoples, in turn, fought back. Wherever this happened, we might reasonably conclude that some non-indigenous individuals were more noble or caring than others, but all were very much a product of their time and background. Where people are brutalised – as many of Australia’s first whitefellas were – they can they become brutal themselves.

There is no reason to assume our first settlers had any deep philosophical commitment to making informed decisions to be kind to the natives: It has been estimated that when Australia was first colonised, the literacy rate in Britain was about 30% (and the people arriving in the first fleet undoubtedly had an even lower literacy rate).