OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 231 



maintain a strict watch over them. This custom has no doubt been 

 forced upon the community by the want of servants, and the 

 necessity of obtaining them. The action of this part of the system 

 will be shown more clearly by the following anecdote. 



One day, passing along George Street with a friend, my attention 

 was called to a fashionable equipage, with a well-dressed man driving 

 it. On my asking to whom it belonged, I was informed that the 

 person driving it was the owner, and that although a ticket-of-leave 

 man, he was married to a free woman of handsome fortune, living in 

 one of the finest houses in Sydney ; that their house was built on the 

 very spot where he stood under the gallows some years since, 

 although through a reprieve, or some accident, he had not been hung ; 

 and that it was at any time within the power of the wife to send him 

 off to the whipping-post, and have him severely flogged. There are 

 many convicts who are now the most wealthy people of New South 

 Wales. I do not intend to be understood that they mix at all in the 

 society of the better class. On the contrary, the convicts and their 

 descendants, even to the third and fourth generation, are excluded 

 from it. 



Society here is composed of many distinct circles. All those of 

 the first class are entitled to be received at the Government House, or 

 are invited there. This privilege seems at present to be the touchstone 

 of gentility ; and if an inquiry is now made of the standing of any 

 one, it is quite sufficient to say he visits at the Government House. 



Any connexion with convicts would at once preclude admission to 

 this circle ; and so distinctly has this line been drawn, and so closely 

 is it adhered to, that should an officer, or other person, contract 

 marriage ties with any one of the lower classes, he would forthwith 

 be shut out. This state of things naturally leads to many heart- 

 burnings among the rising generation, who have every thing to 

 recommend them but a pure descent ; whose behaviour is acknow- 

 ledged by all to be irreproachable, and who among the community 

 stand deservedly very high, some of them occupying posts of high 

 trust and responsibility among men of business, and not a few of 

 them being at the head of large moneyed institutions. 



These differences frequently break out when subscription balls are 

 given, and result in challenges being sent to the managers. One oc- 

 curred on the giving of the St. Patrick's ball. A Mr. D. was admitted 

 as a subscriber by the committee ; he afterwards asked for a ticket for 

 a friend of his, which was refused. Objections were then taken to 



