Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/439

 FREE SETTLERS AND ASSIGNMENT. 325 The sending out settlers who will be interested in the labour of 1788 the convicts, and in the cultivation of the countiy, appears to me lo Jul}-. to be absolutely necessary. . Lands granted to officers or settlers will, I presume, be on con- conditions 4ition of a certain proportion of the land so granted being culti- **' «^*^^ vated or cleared within a certain time, and which time and c[uantity can only be determined by the nature of the ground and situation of the lands. And, in that case, when lands are granted to officers the garrison must be sufficient for the service of the place, and to permit such officers occasionally to be absent at the lands they are to cultivate, and for a certain time. They likewise must be allowed convicts, who must be maintained at the expense of the Crown. Your lordship will be pleased to consider this opinion as given in obedience to orders, on a subject which requires more considera- Apologetic tion than I can give it at present, and at a time when I have only a very superficial knowledge of the country for a few miles around. Although Phillip's knowledge of the country was neces- sarily superficial^ his remarks on the subject contain the germ of the policy which was subsequently adopted by the Government, and which ultimately led to the successful results obtained under later administrations. The only practicable means by which the labour of the convicts Awignment , system. could be utilised was by assigning them to settlers, whose sense of self-interest would induce them to supervise their labourers efficiently, and by that means extract from them a reasonable amount of work. This system differed essentially from the American, which amounted to nothing more than American system. a sale of the convict from the master of the transport to the planter, for the unexpired term of the sentence, — the Go- vernment having nothing to do with the transaction. Under Phillip's proposals, the Government did not part with their pwiiip's control over the convicts after the assignment, while the ^ terms of the bargain gave the employer every reason to treat his servants properly. That this system ultimately gave rise to many lamentable abases does not prove that Phillip's policy was unsound ; because the abuses did not Digitized by Google