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is, or was until a few years ago, the common belief in England that Australians were very easily offended by any reference to the convict times. This is quite a mistake, convict transportation ceased half a century ago, a man who is an 'old lag' is as much a curiosity to Australians nowadays as he would be to Englishmen, and it is quite safe to talk of the subject in any of the colonies.

The penal establishments undeniably earned for themselves a very evil reputation, and the novel For the Term of His Natural Life has done more than anything else to spread abroad and perpetuate an exaggerated notion of the 'horrors of the system.' The system was undoubtedly brutal and degrading, but no more brutal and degrading than 163