284 Notes for the Month. [SEPT. 



now covers a mile and a half of ground in length, and near half a mile in 

 breadth. There are two churches in it; a Presbyterian, a Methodist, and 

 a Catholic chapel ; excellent hotels and taverns ; hospitals, breweries, dis- 

 tilleries, markets, newspapers, auction-rooms, and assemblies ; and a 

 French milliner, by coming over to provide fashions for the ladies, made 

 a fortune of 10,000/. in less than six years! As all the richest settlers 

 are emancipists, or liberated criminals, the word " convict" is, by agree- 

 ment, dismissed from the vocabulary of the colony ; and the Old Bailey 

 sentence under which a man is transported from England, ranks as very 

 little impeachment upon his character; not much more than a verdict 

 against him from the Court of King's Bench, would do at home. In this 

 very desirable country to which Mr. Cunningham particularly recommends 

 those persons to emigrate who can command a capital of J,200/., and 

 which, consequently, can hardly, of itself, be considered objectionable to 

 a person who does not possess a meal or a shilling in this very desirable 

 land, where there are neither game laws nor forest laws ; where man is 

 needed, not burthensome, and where a family, therefore, is not a curse but a 

 blessing ; three years of good conduct gives a convict his freedom. The 

 moment he is free, if he is a farmer, he is at liberty to commence cultiva- 

 tion on his own account; and he obtains a grant of land, of which he pro- 

 bably could never have hoped to rent an acre of land if he had remained 

 in England. If he is an idle London tradesman, free mechanics of every 

 description obtain large wages and constant employ. And while he remains 

 under sentence, he works as a farm labourer ; subject -to prevent all mis- 

 takes to the following government table, touching his extent of allowance 

 and time of employ. " The convicts (Mr. Cunningham says) who are 

 placed upon farms, commence labour at sunrise, and leave off at sunset ; 

 being allowed an hour for breakfast, and an hour, or more, again at din- 

 ner. The afternoon of Saturday is allowed them to wash their clothe?, 

 and grind their wheat. Their allowance (of food) is a peck of wheat; 

 seven pounds of beef, or four and a-half of pork, two ounces of tea, and 

 two ounces of tobacco, and a pound of sugar per week : the majority of 

 settlers permitting them, moreover, to raise vegetables in little gardens 

 allotted to them, or supplying them from their own. They are also fur- 

 nished with two full suits of clothes annually ; a bed tick to be stuffed 

 with grass ; a blanket, a tin pot, a knife, with cooking utensils, &c. &c." 

 Now the writer concludes by expressing (very reasonably, we think) 

 a doubt, whether the convict servants are much harder worked, or more 

 scantily fed, than 01 :.r parish-paid English agricultural labourers. A nd, in 

 fact, it is impossible not to perceive that, between the mildness of our laws 

 and the multitudinousness of our population, the fortune of the convicted 

 offender not to speak of his fortune (in his own view) so long as he 

 escapes is incomparably better than that of the industrious and honest 

 man. We may question whether even Mr. Cunningham's description of 

 Botany Bay will attract a great many emigrants there who can command 

 a capital of J,200. Men who possess a sum like this have local attach- 

 ments ; and some of them have prejudices ; and a man who would emigrate 

 (according to Mr. Cunningham's suggestion) for the sake of benefiting 

 and providing for a rising family of children, may have some suspicions 

 about the convenience of a state of society, in which the having con- 

 demned criminals, in a sufficient state of in-discipline, for servants, is a 

 matter of struggle and contention. The last of these objections, however,, 

 will be little felt by persons in the lower classes ; and, for the first the 



