Page:A colonial autocracy, New South Wales under Governor Macquarie, 1810-1821.djvu/158

 payment, but hesitated to do so under the impression that the colonial funds did not warrant the commutation. He could not grasp the fact that the "unseen" expense was far greater than the "seen". The whole system was unsparingly condemned by Bigge in his report of 1822. It had indeed no possible ground of justification. It gave practical freedom, without even an obligation to work for a living, to a class of men neither able nor anxious to profit by it, and it let loose upon the town some hundreds of convicts ripe for every dissipation that was offered them.

The number of convicts not in Government service who received Government rations amounted in 1819 to 1,821, while there were 4,567 who did not receive them assigned to settlers. It was this body of men who constituted the most important factor of the labour problem.

The following method was that adopted in their distribution. After the arrival of a convict transport the prisoners were mustered on board by the Governor's Secretary, who inquired into their treatment on the voyage. The chief engineer and superintendent of convicts then asked each man what was his trade or to what work he was accustomed. All those who were artisans or mechanics were at once set aside for the Government gangs, where their knowledge was needed to carry out the public works. As men of skill were few, a good workman was kept a long time in the service, and found it difificult to procure tickets-of-leave or other mitigations of sentence, and the more skilful and steady he was the less chance he had of freedom. The good mechanics, hearing of these things from old hands transported for a second time, or in some of the mysterious ways in which they managed to procure information which the authorities studiously strove to keep back, would try to conceal their trade from the superintendent On the other hand unskilled workmen who wanted to stay in Sydney, instead of being sent to the country, often made a pretence of being mechanics and skilled labourers.

The Government having thus attempted to pick out the most useful men and any others that were needed, the servants