Page:Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies.djvu/204

162 and was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to be transported.

Having forfeited, by his crimes, that freedom to which, as an Englishman, he was born, his ankles were loaded with chains, and he was subjected to the rigid discipline of a convict, on a voyage of sixteen thousand miles from his native land—that land to which he was never more to return—and on arriving at Hobart Town, he, and his numerous shipmates, under like circumstances, were assigned into bond service. This service differs little from slavery, except that the prisoner remains the property of the Government, and consequently cannot be sold by his master. The master agrees with the Government to comply with certain terms in regard to the food, clothing, and labour of the assigned servant; and the servant may complain to a magistrate if his master fail to do justly in these respects. But the prisoner is liable, on the complaint of his master, to be flogged or sent to work in chains, for insubordination and other offences; and his insubordination may often be little more than irritation of temper, excited by an unreasonable master.

The convict, like a slave, may happen to be the servant of a kind or of a hard-hearted master; and if he should be the servant of a hard master, he must bear it, for he cannot change at pleasure, because he is in bondage—galling bondage! a state from which even those who have the best of masters, are glad to be delivered.

On arriving in Van Diemens Land, R. King saw several young men, whom he had known in England, such as himself, but who, in the day of their trouble had sought the Lord, and had come under the power of religion; and the change in them was so great, that he began to think there was more in religion than he had been willing to admit. Happily for him, he was assigned to a kind and pious master, whose wife was of similar character; and their example helped to deepen those favourable impressions which he had received, in regard to religion, at a time when his heart was softened by the affliction that he had brought upon himself by his sins. His mind now became open to