Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/257

( 232 ) on board the Calcutta, where, out of three hundred and seven convicts, there were but eight carpenters and joiners, three smiths,one gardener, twenty labouring farmers, two fishermen, nine taylors, and four stone-masons. The remainder may be classed under the heads of gentlemen's servants, hair-dressers, hackney-coachmen, chairmen, silk- weavers, calico-printers, watch-makers, lapidaries, merchant's clerks, and gentlemen. It requires no argument to demonstrate the little use such trades are in an infant colony, where agriculture is the chief pursuit, and where manual labour is infinitely more necessary than ingenuity. It is true a watch-maker deals in metals as well as the smith, but we doubt whether, with all his exertions, he could make a hundred nails in a day. With respect to gentlemen convicts, they are worse than useless, for they are invariably troublesome, as the present government of New South Wales can sufficiently attest. The education and the manners of such people will