THE PASTOR ALIST AND THE CONVICT 107 



Convicts were the stand-by of prospecting squatters. 

 A pioneer squatter would give his men the choice. He 

 would tell them that he was going into the interior. 

 If any of them jibbed (did not like the job or the ex- 

 pedition), they were to let him know, and he would 

 dismiss them and procure others, but if they stuck to 

 him, he would stick to them, and give them good rations 

 and £20 a year. Very few of them did jib, and most of 

 them behaved so well that many of them got tickets, 

 while some, like Patrick Murphy, Patrick Leslie's chief 

 henchman, got conditional pardons.* 



Ambitiously and daringly advancing into the wilds, 

 and spreading themselves out in all directions as pioneers, 

 immigrants discovered sites suited for new pastoral 

 stations, and, " biting off more than they could chew," 

 often earmarked them (as they could legally do), before 

 they could stock them and, still more, before they could 

 man them. The cry for labour was the cry of the fam- 

 ished and the despairing throughout pastoral Australia. 

 Labour was dear and bad when it could be found, but 

 most commonly it was not to be had. At their wits' 

 end for it, the Northern squatters, in full sympathy with 

 the squatters in Southern parts, petitioned the Secretary 

 of State for more convicts. " What has " Patrick 

 Leslie " ever done for the country," cried Dr. Lang, 

 " beyond assisting in putting up public prayers to the 

 ' god ' Grey for more convicts ? " The pioneer squatter 

 of Queensland had done much more than that ; but, 

 at all events, he did petition for more " exiles." And 

 one of the class that he adorned stated, when he moved 

 a resolution at Ipswich in 1850 in favour of the intro- 

 duction of convicts, that he " would rather have the 

 pick of the gaols than the refuse of the workhouses." 



As Cairnes and the economists have proved, slave 

 labour is dear. So was the labour of those convicts 

 who were the true equivalents of the ancient slaves. 

 Governor King shall tell us why. The Governor wrote 

 that they were perverse, and that their labour could 

 * Campbell Peaed, My Australian Girlhood, p. 8. 



