130 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



payment, but hesitated to do so under the impression that the 

 colonial funds did not warrant the commutation. He could not 

 grasp the fact that the " unseen " expense was far greater than the 

 "seen". The whole system was unsparingly condemned by 

 Bigge in his report of 1822. It had indeed no possible ground 

 of justification. It gave practical freedom, without even an 

 obligation to work for a living, to a class of men neither able 

 nor anxious to profit by it, and it let loose upon the town some 

 hundreds of convicts ripe for every dissipation that was offered 

 them. 



The number of convicts not in Government service who re- 

 ceived Government rations amounted in 1819 to 1,821, while 

 there were 4,567 who did not receive them assigned to settlers. 

 It was this body of men who constituted the most important 

 factor of the labour problem. 



The following method was that adopted in their distribution. 

 After the arrival of a convict transport the prisoners were 

 mustered on board by the Governor's Secretary, who inquired 

 into their treatment on the voyage. The chief engineer l 

 and superintendent of convicts then asked each man what was 

 his trade or to what work he was accustomed. All those who 

 were artisans or mechanics were at once set aside for the Govern- 

 ment gangs, where their knowledge was needed to carry out the 

 public works. As men of skill were few, a good workman was 

 kept a long time in the service, and found it difficult to procure 

 tickets-of-leave or other mitigations of sentence, and the more 

 skilful and steady he was the less chance he had of freedom. 

 The good mechanics, hearing of these things from old hands 

 transported for a second time, or in some of the mysterious ways 

 in which they managed to procure information which the 

 authorities studiously strove to keep back, would try to conceal 

 their trade from the superintendent. On the other hand un- 

 skilled workmen who wanted to stay in Sydney, instead of being 

 sent to the country, often made a pretence of being mechanics 

 and skilled labourers. 2 



The Government having thus attempted to pick out the 

 most useful men and any others that were needed, the servants 



1 He was the head of the Public Works Department of Government. 



2 Notice in S.G., I2th April, 1817. Convicts who do this are threatened with 

 hard labour at Newcastle. 



