128 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



made very bad and quarrelsome servants, and complaints were 

 universal. 



The male convicts were assigned to settlers or kept to work 

 for the Government. At the end of 1819 there were in Govern- 

 ment service altogether 2,476 male convicts, and 200 were serving 

 colonial sentences at Newcastle. The remaining 6,388 prisoners 

 were in the service of the inhabitants of the Colony both free 

 and freed. Their masters were not all employed in agricultural 

 pursuits. In Sydney, for example, and the district surrounding 

 it, there were 2,368 assigned servants, most of the masters of 

 whom were occupied in the town. Great landowners, such as 

 Macarthur and William Cox, had as many as a hundred convicts, 

 and Wentworth and an emancipist named Terry, who owned 

 the two largest estates in the Colony, probably had still more. 

 Settlers with farms of five to fifty acres usually received one 

 servant with their grant, and were allowed to retain him at their 

 own expense if they wished. This was something of an innova- 

 tion, for before 181 1 a convict servant was not allowed to any one 

 farming less than twenty acres. 1 For reasons which will appear 

 later it was an innovation which received little approval from the 

 magistrates. 



While the convicts were being thus distributed over wider 

 and wider areas their distribution was in another way restricted. 

 It had for long been customary to allow to each of the civil 

 officers of the Government and of the officers of the garrison 

 a domestic servant subsisted at Government expense. Lord 

 Bathurst learnt of this practice for the first time from one of 

 Macquarie's despatches, and immediately directed him to bring 

 it to an end. This was done by a Government Order in 1814, 

 and at the same time it was announced that Government would 

 no longer give rations to the families of officers on the civil staff. 2 

 It was thought necessary, however, to exempt from this rule the 

 subordinate officers, the superintendents, overseers, clerks and 



According to the scale drawn up by Oxley in 1821, servants were thus 

 allotted. Farms of 100 acres or less, i servant ; 200 to 400, 2 ; 500 to 750, 3 ; 

 1,000 to 1,700, 4 ; 2,000 to 2,500, 5 ; 3,000 or over, 6. 



2 G.G.O., 3rd September, 1814. The Order quotes the words of Lord Bathurst's 

 Despatch, which was usually done when an order likely to be unpopular had to be 

 enforced. Of course officers could still have convict servants if they undertook to 

 provide for them. 



