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246 for his labourers, and uniting in his own person the various callings of grocer, flour dealer, butcher, boot-maker, and seller of ready-made clothes to his own men. There is no need to point out the probability that this arrangement should be abused, or to say much of the evils of an institution which, at home, has been thought so intolerable as to be abolished by Act of Parliament.

Most things, however, are modified by change of locality, and the prominent feature that "truck" exhibits, in a penal settlement, is that of being the best scheme which ever was devised for disgusting rogues with honest labour. Whilst it chafes the free labourer it utterly disheartens the convict; and a disheartened convict is a hardened one, infinitely less ashamed to be drafted back to the "Establishment" than is a labourer at home to apply for outdoor parochial relief.

I remember that a ticket-of-leave man and his wife came to ask our help who had taken service upon a written agreement as to wages, though neither of them could read writing. On dismissal by the master they were paid nothing, as it appeared by the employer's reckoning that they had already received from him, whilst in his service, goods to the full value of all wages that they were entitled to demand. The man and his wife were utterly penniless, and begged us, besides the food that we gave them, to lend them a covering for the night. The pair ought, however, as the wolf suggested to the crane in the fable, to have felt thankful that they escaped so well, for the truck arithmetic is not famous for striking an even balance, being, on the contrary, much better adapted for finding a servant in his master's debt. When this discovery has