Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/512

One motive with convicts who concealed their skill was the fear of being kept in bonds. To retain a good workman a settler of low moral tone, or a government overseer, would pick a quarrel with him, and the punishment inflicted always put off the time at which under the regulations the indulgence of a ticket-of-leave or a conditional pardon would be granted. The Parliamentary Committee (1812) declared that the convicts were well aware that any skill that they may acquire or display in the service of government will be the cause of their further detention in it." The applications for assignment of convicts were in the first instance made direct to the Governor. Macquarie, in this matter, as well as respecting spirits landed from vessels, ordered that applications should be made to subordinate officials.

From the gangs in which the convicts were collected, thieves, burglars, and sharpers went out marauding. At a later date (1835) Judge Burton declared (in a Charge) that they poured in and out like bees; "with this difference, the one works by day, the other by night; the one goes forth to industry, the other to plunder." Macquarie and his friends vainly pleaded that the colony had prospered under his care. Emancipated crime had certainly thriven. The wit of Sydney Smith impaled the folly that made crime the stepping-stone to wealth and station. Culprits stood—

Circumstances might have done something towards this end, but Macquarie did more. He endeavoured to make Australia a convict paradise; he reiterated that the colony was created for the benefit of convicts; he scorned the assumption of virtue by the unconvicted. He recognized no man's right to be in the colony unless he had, or ought to have been, convicted, and he strove to compel the free to receive the freed into their society. "My principle (he wrote) is that when once a man is free, his former state should no longer be remembered, or allowed to act against him." The class of which he was gaoler occupied his thoughts. Others were intruders in their domain. He was surprised at "the extraordinary and illiberal policy adopted by all the persons who had preceded him" in office.