Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/82

 allowed to have the comfort of a priest of their own religion. Considering that the Roman Catholic cannot, like the Protestant, retire to any solitude and there relieve his mind by prayer and confession to God that he deems the intervention of the priest, especially on his deathbed, essential to his salvation it is not extraordinary that the Irish part of the prisoner-population should have been turbulent and desperate; they felt themselves condemned to misery in this world, and perdition in the next dying "unhousel'd, unannointed, unanel'd."

The tone of society in the towns was horrible: no educated or honourable class; no church worthy of the name; no schools except for the wealthy, and these chiefly taught by convicts; slave-masters who sold rum; slaves who drank it; an autocrat surrounded by parasites, whose fortune he could make by a stroke of his pen. Except military honour, and the virtue cherished by a few who lived apart, there was as little virtue and honour as freedom in this wretched, prosperous colony.

From the foundation of New South Wales to the end of Governor Macquarie's administration, about 400,000 acres of land were granted to private individuals. Of these, in course of time, many town lots have become of enormous value, as likewise some of the country land; but much was barren, and not worth cultivation when better land was rendered accessible by roads.

In 1817, the first judge, Mr. Field, arrived; a branch of the Bible Society was established, and a Roman Catholic priest, Father O'Flynn, landed and spent some time in the colony, but, not having been duly authorised by the home government, he was compelled to return. Bigotry was in full bloom before Christianity had taken root.

In 1819 arrived a commissioner of inquiry, John Thomas Bigge, Esq., and his secretary, Thomas Hobbs Scott, Esq. He remained until February, 1821, having collected a body of evidence, which was afterwards printed for the use of the House of Commons. It contains many curious stories. The publication of this report had a considerable effect in directing the attention of the British public to the resources of Australia, and eventually caused the influx of a superior class of emigrants. But it was not until Governor Darling's time that the demand for convict labourers, on terms then in force, began to exceed the supply. Colonists, chiefly the Scotchmen, discovered the advantage of agricultural pursuits in a colony in which, with a grant of land, they became entitled to rations for twelve months for themselves and their wives, and convict labourers at the rate of one for each thirty acres,