THE PA8T0RALIST AND THE CONVICT 101 



of that harsli day annexed severe punishments. Others 

 have affirmed that the majority of the convicts were 

 poHtical offenders. It would be hard to say which of 

 the two assertions is the more incorrect. Contemporary 

 narratives like Collins's, the despatches of the Governors, 

 the known histories of certain of the convicts, the 

 evidence given before English Parliamentary com- 

 mittees, the observations of travellers, and the mere 

 existence of such convict-hells as Parramatta, Port 

 Arthur, and Norfolk Island, are there to prove the 

 contrary. Some of the convicts transported to New 

 South Wales in its first and second decades were cer- 

 tainly criminals of a venial type, Avhoni the starvation 

 too common in those dark days of the European war 

 drove of necessity to crime, and whose nature was 

 not criminal. Others, like the Scottish political 

 " martyrs," were men of unblemished character. These 

 last were, indeed, allowed to live in comparative free- 

 dom. Still others, like Dr. Redfern, were transported 

 for actively sympathising with the mutineers of the 

 Nore. Two were gentlemen who were transported for 

 killing in duels. Some Mere women who were sent 

 out for concealing, or conniving at the escape of, their 

 lovers, French officers on parole. But the bulk of 

 the convicts were men and women of undeniably bad 

 character, and, with one striking exception, they were 

 often the more irredeemably bad because they had a 

 taking exterior and a plausible address. 



What was to be done with such materials as these ? 

 What kind of a community could be built up out of 

 them ? The reformation of the convicts and the 

 foundation of a new system of colonisation — that of 

 " colonising-transportation," as it was called, were the 

 chief objects of the settlement. Both were in large 

 measure attained, but not in virtue of the means used 

 to attain them. Numbers of the convicts were re- 

 formed, but not by transportation only and participa- 

 tion in public works, but as the instruments of a new 

 form of rural industry, as servants of the pastoralists. 



