Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/42

 the law of the lash, tyranny became chronic, and cruelty spread through the whole body corporate of the colony.

A singular succession of serious, pitiable, ludicrous, and disgraceful incidents, mark the history of the settlement, from the day of proclaiming the king's commission to the end of the year 1800, which has been minutely recorded by Collins. At one time "a person named Smith, on his way to India, professing some knowledge of agriculture," is engaged by the government, and created a peace-officer at Rosehill, the site of the future town of Paramatta [sic], the said Smith being apparently the only freeman with any claims to the kind of knowledge on which the subsistence of the colony was likely to depend. At another time one Bryant, a Devonshire prisoner, employed in his calling of a fisherman, is detected in secreting and selling large quantities of fish, and is severely punished; but, "being too useful a person to part with, and send to the Brick Cart," he is retained to fish for the settlement. This man afterwards escaped with his family and a party of other prisoners in an open boat to the Island of Timor; he was there captured by a man-of-war, and carried to Batavia, where he died. His wife was conveyed to England, tried, and confined in Newgate until the term of her original sentence expired.

Then we find convicts, "when little more than two years had elapsed," claiming their discharge on the ground that the time of their sentence had expired, which was possible, as it would date from the day of their sentences. When, in answer to these claims, inquiries are made for the documents containing the particulars, "it is found that they have been left in England, and that, therefore, it is impossible to affirm or deny the claims." Consequently, the prisoners are told they must wait for an answer to a despatch to be sent by the first opportunity to England, a period of two or three years. One of the prisoners, not very well pleased with the prospect of such delay, expresses himself disrespectfully of the lieutenant-governor in the presence of the governor. Thereupon he is seized, tried by a criminal court, found guilty, and sentenced to receive six hundred lashes, and wear irons for the space of six months. About the same time a soldier having been found guilty of a horrible criminal assault on a female child, his sentence is commuted to banishment for life to the auxiliary agricultural settlement of Norfolk Island.

These are but a few gems of the judicial system by which New South Wales was ruled for nearly the first quarter of a century of its existence.

In 1790, the third year of colonisation, four ships arrived filled