‘On British Felony the Sun Never Sets’

ABSTRACT

This article examines the narratives of three political prisoners transported to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land: the French-Canadian François-Xavier Prieur, the American Linus Miller, and the Irishman John Mitchel. It shows that the three ‘politicals’ sought to portray the suffering of political convicts as greater than that of the convict majority, from which they distanced themselves in terms of class, piety and honour. It also demonstrates how the three men critiqued the British Empire and the convict system in Australia, how they wrote (in some instances, re-wrote) their lives for their audience, and how they defined themselves in the convict colonies.