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 in the Australian colonies, to reduce the reputable portion of the community to the same level with themselves; to abolish all those salutary distinctions which the laws of God and of man have created between right and wrong; and, if possible, to dispossess the whole convict population of all sense and feeling of degradation and criminality.

That a convict merely holding a ticket of leave, and consequently under the strict surveillance of the colonial police, should have been allowed to occupy a situation of such commanding influence in a convict colony may perhaps appear unaccountable to the reader; but as it is no business of mine to attempt to explain the fact, I shall only observe, that the suspicion of connivance at the subsequently detected delinquencies of this individual, on the part of certain officers of government, was universal throughout the colony; as it eventually appeared, that he had not only been excused from attending the regular musters of ticket of leave holders, but had even been living for some time, with the knowledge of the police, in a state of concubinage with a female convict illegally at large. That convict female was afterwards forwarded to the Factory, or government prison for female convicts, at Parramatta; which, in this particular instance, as it has doubtless been in numberless others, was converted into a lying-in-