Political Prisoners
Political prisoners made up a small proportion of convicts. They arrived in waves corresponding to political unrest in the British Isles. They included the First Scottish Martyrs in 1794; British Naval Mutineers (from the Nore Mutiny) in 1797 and 1801; Irish rebels in 1798, 1803, 1848 and 1868; Scots Rebels (1820); Yorkshire Rebels (1820 and 1822); leaders of the Merthyr Tydfil rising of 1831; The Tolpuddle Martyrs (1834); Swing Rioters and Machine Breakers (1828–1833); Upper Canada rebellion/Lower Canada Rebellion (1839) and Chartists (1842).
Read more about this topic: Convictism In Australia
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or prisoners:
“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)