108 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



be made profitable only through constant vigilance, 

 inspection and the exercise of authority. Their over- 

 seers belonged to the same class, and they needed strong 

 incentives — the assignment to them of convict servants, 

 better rations, and the prospect of being pardoned — 

 to induce them to perform their duty. One of the 

 pastoralists writes of the " uselessness of most of the 

 convict servants," and John McArthur's account of 

 them is mainly adverse.* 



On the other hand, it is stated that the ex-convicts 

 imported into South Australia by Robert Gouger in 

 1838 were more skilful workers in the various classes 

 of labour needed in a young colony than British work- 

 men. In splitting timber, fencing, and putting up 

 rough wooden buildings, they already had the ex- 

 pertness that nearly all colonists soon acquire. 



Like the Jew or the peasant who understates his 

 wealth in order to escape the rapacity of the tax- 

 gatherer, the squatters, too, sometimes sought to disarm 

 opposition by depreciating the labour of their slaves. 

 Convict labour, they alleged, was not cheap labour. 

 They did not always assume the dearness of convict 

 labour, Wlien it suited their purpose, they could profess 

 that it was cheap labour. The members of an associa- 

 tion formed in 1843 — the Association for Obtaining Per- 

 mission to Import Coolies (what a title !) — alleged that 

 *' the abundance and cheapness of convict labour had 

 created their former land-fund." (This was truly to 

 magnify the convicts and the services they had rendered ! ) 

 And they declared that the introduction of coolies was 

 the only measure " calculated to avert the ruin with 

 which they were threatened." f The sagacious Gover- 

 nor, tSir George Gipps, admitted the scarcity of labour 

 in the Colony, but evidently doubted the wisdom of 

 the proposed step. The proposal came to nothing, but 

 it left an unsavoury odour around the persons of the 



* Victorian Pioneers, p. 169 ; nnd appendix to Bioge's Re- 

 ports. 



t Mitchell Library MSS., vol. xlii. 



