I 3 6 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



servants desired it, in money, 1 but a deduction of 3 might be 

 made for clothing. 2 



The Order issued in 1814 discloses the difficulties of the 

 small settlers with their Government men. 



" It having come to the knowledge of the Governor," the 

 Order runs, " that the practice of remunerating Government men 

 for their extra time and labour either by permitting them to 

 employ certain portions of their time for their own benefit, wher- 

 ever they may choose to engage themselves, or to cultivate grain 

 or rear pigs or other animals in lieu of giving them the wages 

 prescribed by the established regulations of the Colony, his Ex- 

 cellency cannot avoid calling the attention of the public to the 

 consideration of the ill consequences necessarily resulting from 

 either the one commutation or the other. Those persons who 

 have been in the habit of giving up portions of their 3 time to 

 their Government men, must be aware that they thereby enable 

 idle and disorderly persons in the class of assigned convicts to 

 pass into parts of the country where their persons are not known ; 

 whilst the latter, availing themselves of that circumstance, com- 

 mit the most flagrant and atrocious acts under the idea that they 

 will avoid detection. 



"That robberies very frequently escape detection by the 

 sudden retreat of the perpetrators from that part of the country 

 where they committed their depredations, is too notorious to be 

 controverted : This fact fully evinces the necessity for doing 

 away the practice. 



" Those Government men who have the indulgence of culti- 

 vating ground and rearing stock instead of receiving their pre- 

 scribed wages, frequently become the receivers of stolen grain 

 and provisions, which, being blended with that of their own 

 rearing, baffles detection, and justice is thereby defeated. 



" Settlers or others who do not require the entire services of the 

 men assigned to them, or who cannot afford to pay them for 

 their extra labour, are required to return them forthwith to the 

 principal superintendent of convicts at Sydney, or to the magis- 

 trates of the district to which they respectively belong." * 



But the evil against which this Order was directed was the 



1 G.G.O., yth September, 1816. a Ibid., December, 1816. 



3 .*., The servants. 4 G.G.O., loth September, 1814. 



