106 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



magistrates. A strong protest was made. The Gover- 

 nor replied that he had an absolute right to assign or 

 withdraw convicts, as justice might require, and he 

 could at any time modify the status by issuing rules 

 regulating it. If convicts were insufficiently fed or 

 clothed, or were suffered to work abroad or at large, 

 their employers were liable to lose them. About the 

 same time Sir George Arthur, Governor of Van Diemen's 

 Land (1824-36), admitted that all of his tasks together 

 were less embarrassing than the " anxious duty " of 

 apportioning public lands among the settlers and assign- 

 ing convict servants. 



The assignment-system was denounced by a select 

 committee of the House of Commons in 1838 as unequal 

 in its incidence, radically vicious, and surrounded by 

 abuses. The assignment of convicts to their wives 

 and to other relatives seems to have been a fact as 

 well as a theme of fiction. Yet it was shown by evidence 

 before that committee that on the whole it had worked 

 well. In respectable and well-conducted families the 

 condition of such servants was similar to that of servants 

 in England. They were employed as teachers and 

 domestic tutors, often imposing, it appears, on anxious 

 mothers the necessity of their frequent presence and 

 constant vigilance. 



Two measures aided in stripping the assignment 

 system of its abuses. Governor Bourke drafted a code 

 of regulations for the assignment of convict servants. 

 It limited the number of such servants and made it 

 proportional to the extent of land and especially of 

 land in cultivation. Not more than 70 convicts could 

 be assigned to one proprietor or runholder. Governor 

 Darling created an Assignment Board to correct the 

 abuses arising out of the system, which, it was notorious, 

 had often been a source of patronage. The result was, 

 in some measure, to equalise the distribution of con- 

 victs among the settlers. Yet Dr. Lang gives instances 

 of great inequality under Darling.* 

 * Account, i. 248. 



