116 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



Meanwhile, the agitation continued. The Emancipists 

 sent Home petitions in one sense, and the Exclusives 

 carried Home petitions in the opposite sense. To give 

 these latter weight, and spread an atmosphere about the 

 whole question, James McArthur published a volume 

 in London in 1837 that was an able piece of special 

 pleading on the subject. He strongly disclaimed all 

 sympathy with the " slave-masters," and he repudiated 

 the association habitually made between convictism 

 and slaver5^ The parallel between even American 

 negro-slavery — at all events, between ancient Greek 

 and Roman slavery — ^is too close to be lightly denied. 

 The power of the master to flog the convict, and his 

 right to keep him in confinement, are two identifying 

 features that cannot be mistaken. Was even Went- 

 worth, the great champion of the unfortunate class, 

 quite devoid of the sentiments of the slave-driver 1 

 A once well-known person in New South Wales, a 

 squatter and a magistrate, James Mudie, published in 

 London an exceedingly bitter and almost scurrilous 

 volume on The Felonry of New South Wales. It abounds 

 in pointed descriptions and pungent anecdotes, which 

 sometimes throw a turbid light on the state of the Colony. 



The marriage, or other sexual relationship, of the 

 convicts with one another or with the free, and the 

 consequent proportion of convict blood in the existing 

 population of Australia, are subjects so disagreeable as 

 to be habitually shunned. Writers like Father Tenison 

 Woods and Professor Gregory minimise both, and a third 

 has said, in a lovely phrase, that the convicts failed 

 to " achieve domesticity," or to leave offspring. But 

 " facts are chiels that winna ding," and here the facts 

 are dead against the rash generalisers. \Mien Com- 

 missioner Bigge visited Australia in 1819-20, he found 

 a very different state of things. He affirms that the 

 marriage of male convicts with freedwomen, and with 

 j^oung white native women, was " very frequent." 

 So common was it that regulations had to be made in 

 connection with it ; in such cases application had to be 



