Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/46

 with free labour, and proves a source of grievance to the free labourer.

"Convicts should never be allowed," says Archbishop Whately, "as in New South Wales, to be employed and paid by farmers;" a sentiment in the propriety of which I entirely concur: "but the superintendents might contract for the levelling, draining, or trenching, &c. of a piece of ground," (that is, in England,) "and would thus set the convicts to work under their own inspection: and though the payment for this, and indeed any other labour of convicts, could seldom be expected to cover the cost of their maintenance and other expenses, it might still be regarded as so much clear gain, since they must be maintained at any rate."

The Archbishop, therefore, virtually proposes that the superintendents of convicts should underbid free labour in the home-market, and thereby take the bread out of the mouth of the free labourer, who is employed in England, perhaps, at a shilling a day; or in Ireland, as was lately the case near Limerick, up to his knees in water too, for not more than fourpence! But would such a measure, on the part of government, be tolerated by the labouring poor in a free country? or rather ought it to be tolerated? Would not insurrections, rick-burning, prison-breaking, martial law, and