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UCH a momentum was given to development in 1861-8 that it would seem as if the introduction of convicts had provided a panacea to dispel all deep-rooted troubles. The position was so improved that the colony could gracefully dispense with such a dubious source of wealth.

After considering the position in 1850 with that at the end of 1861-8 even the prejudiced critic must confess that though convictism was dangerous, doubtful, and repugnant, it certainly gave settlement an impulse that decades of struggling and waiting would not have done. And with the advantage of succeeding years of knowledge he might also confess that transportation was almost justified by results. The convict lost nothing but the home he proved himself unworthy of; he gained lighter punishment, a better standing, and an infinitely greater opportunity of winning name and fortune. The settler ran risks of having his infant country corrupted, of condemnation for resorting to questionable agents to obtain prosperity; he secured a temporary prosperity without the permanent vitiation that was anticipated.

It would seem improbable that an army of over 9,000 criminals could be quartered for years in a community of lesser numbers in adults without becoming the dominating power, and leaving an indelible memorial of its presence on the character and physique of succeeding generations. To a slight extent—perhaps not more than the usual proportion in a country—signs of criminality are to be seen in the faces of isolated communities; also, even to this day, the indigence and hopeless inebriety of the class are found in one or two rural districts. Some point to a crowded lunatic asylum as an aftermath. And yet, by instituting comparisons between Western Australian communities and others in Australia, where convicts were never introduced, the value of these conclusions will be minimised. Officials trace the number of lunatics to consanguineous marriages in remote portions of the colony; heat, or isolation in lonely places, have probably caused similar results. Drunkenness was not confined to convicts. Mrs. Millett, Mr. Howard Willoughby (the writer of a pamphlet on Western Australia in 1864), convict officials in their reports, and newspapers, repeatedly recorded that among sections of free settlers and pensioners intoxication was as rife as among felons. In point of morality a Western Australian community to-day will compare with any other Australian community.

This substantial absence of taint comes from the most natural consequences. So irregular were the lives of the worst classes of convicts that they seldom married or became fathers of families. They spent all their wages in drink, in serving their own vitiated appetites, and therefore they did not set up housekeeping. Their existence was precarious and sottish and short. Then large numbers left the colony altogether; it is impossible to record how many. Notwithstanding strict regulations hundreds succeeded in entering eastern colonies, while hundreds more removed to other parts of the world. The best classes established homes in Western Australia and begat families. Their conduct was so excellent that often no difference could be detected between them and freemen. But it is in the children of convicts that the most gratifying variations and consequences are observable. At first thought it would be considered that in moral heredity the children would take after their parents. To quite a remarkable proportion this was not so. Whatever be the cause, whether environment, opportunity, absence of incentive and temptation, or climate, these children became Australians in character and temperament. They were educated side by side with the children of the free, and since they have become men and women they have enjoyed equal opportunities for wealth. The criminal records of the last twenty years—1877 to 1897 show a singular immunity from serious crime.

A glance at the social conditions of Western Australia in 1861-8 adduces some curious facts. The free people were not affected to any serious extent by the advent of the emancipated class. There was a great gulf between free and bond—a gulf, one writer put it, as deep as that separating Dives and Lazarus.