

Monthly Review of Literature. 537 



of a gentleman/ clerks, for example, such as Watt, who have robbed masters 

 by whom they were confidentially trusted and liberally paid, robbed them of 

 large sums, not through want or necessity, but for the sake of gratifying their 

 profligate tastes and depraved desires, or swindlers who have for years 

 preyed upon the public by obtaining all kinds of goods and money by every 

 species of false pretences, if they be gentlemen convicts, they are treated as 

 gentlemen, and are either removed to the elysium of Port Macquarie, or as- 

 signed to masters whose employments for them and their accompanying 

 treatment are redolent of ease and comfort instead of punishment. By some 

 plausible tale they excite sympathy ; and if for some time they take the trou- 

 ble of acting a part, they soon get recommended for tickets-of-leave or con- 

 ditional pardons, which, if they do not serve as passports to employment in 

 the government offices, are sure to be followed by their obtaining comfortable 

 berths of some kind, or getting into some way of dealing, by^means of which, 

 with a very small share of diligence and attention, and a large stock of roguery, 

 they are sure to get on well, to become rich and luxurious citizens, and to 

 hold up their heads with the best and proudest in the colony. Indeed, the 

 more knowing ones, that is, the very worst characters amongst the convicts, 

 seldom undergo any real punishment at all. Whether thieves, burglars, 

 Receivers, forgers, swindlers, or mail-coach robbers, if they are ' well up to 

 the trick/ they bring out with them letters to some of the ' old hands' in the 

 colony, so as to ensure their being applied for as assigned servants by per- 

 sons of the right sort. If they have secured a portion of the plunder they had 

 acquired in England, they easily make themselves comfortable ; for in that 

 case they enter into copartnery, under the rose, with some one or other of 

 the emancipated felonry, who, being enabled by the funds of their convict 

 partners to take houses or enter into business, apply to have their partners 

 assigned to them as servants, and the gentlemen convicts fall upon a bed of 

 roses at once ! 



" If a wife has been left in England with the charge of the spoil, she follows 

 her husband in the first ship ; on her arrival she takes a house, and then 

 petitions the governor to have her husband the father of her children 

 assigned to her as her servant, in which petition her husband of course 

 joins. If she has no children of her own, three or four brats are easily bor- 

 rowed in Sydney for the purpose of stage effect ; and off she sets for govern- 

 ment-house, where the sight of the afflicted lady and her little ones of course 

 has a wonderful influence over the sympathetic Governor Bourke. In short, 

 having brought with her a supply of the ' swag,' as the convicts call their ill- 

 gotten cash, a wife seldom fails of having her husband assigned to her, in 

 which case the transported felon finds himself his own master, in possession 

 of all the present wealth his past nefarious courses may have procured for 

 him, and on the road to future fortune. 



" For the very worst characters who are transported, therefore, it appears 

 that New South Wales is not any punishment at all, or at least that it is easy 

 for them, owing to the careless laxity and childish leniency of the colonial 

 authorities, to evade the punishment which their crimes have merited." 



So much for the male convicts, and for the judicious distinction in portion- 

 ing to them their allotted labour. The fairer and more delicate part of the 

 convict population are not much more virtuous and respectable than the males, 

 as the following will show most satisfactorily : 



" The assignment of the female convicts, like that of the males, usually 

 takes place eight or ten days after their arrival in Sydney ; and, when the 

 applicants have been supplied, the remaining females (if any) are forwarded 

 to what is called the factory, at Parramatta. The factory cannot properly 

 be regarded as a place of punishment. The females are well fed, having, in 

 addition to abundance of animal food, flour, bread, and vegetables, the indul- 

 gence of tea and sugar. They are not put to any labour ; and though they 

 are certainly and necessarily cut off from external intercourse, they have the 



