1 42 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



should receive wages at all, food, clothing and shelter being all 

 to which they had a right. Cox objected that that would have 

 placed them altogether in the position of slaves. Marsden, after 

 thirty years' experience, could suggest no alternative scheme and 

 yet condemned the one in force. The opinion of the majority 

 was that the Regulations had not sufficient elasticity and gave 

 no opportunity for grading the men according to their merits. 



Bigge himself came to the very lame conclusion that 

 Government servants ought not to receive wages but only oc- 

 casional rewards, and that more settlers should be encouraged 

 to come from England. Thus more employment would be 

 provided for the convicts and less encouragement for them on 

 regaining their freedom to become "prematurely proprietors 

 and masters". Like those who were sheep-farmers, he dwelt 

 much on the moral value of shepherding, and indeed there was 

 a certain fascination in the picture of the London thief watching 

 his lambs beneath the she-oaks and haply repenting on the evil 

 of his past. 1 The ignorant townsman, used to the noise and 

 hubbub of cities, must have trembled at many a ghost in the 

 quiet melancholy of the Australian forest. 



Riley, who with the exception of Macarthur was the most 

 far-sighted of the settlers, and who seems to have been slightly 

 inoculated with the theory of free trade, put his finger on the 

 real need of the Colony free labourers with a knowledge of 

 agriculture. He thought more convicts would then be employed, 

 for " the settlers would be enabled so to extend their cultivation 

 in many instances, that they would require the addition of 

 other servants to assist them. I know that many persons are 

 at this moment prevented entering into the cultivation of hemp 

 and flax solely from the want of servants who are adapted to the 

 raising and preparing these articles, and one man capable of 

 giving directions for the produce of them could give occasion to 

 the employ of many inferior labourers." 



He calculated that 30 a head would cover the cost of send- 

 ing out such labourers, and that immediately on their arrival at 

 Sydney they would find masters ready to give them 20 a year 

 and their board. The masters might then become responsible 



1 See Reports III. and I. 



