'brother's, and has hitherto given entire satisfaction to his employer.

The eighth was an Irishman, rather up in years, of the name of Murphy. He was assigned to my relatives on his arrival in the colony in 1824, but being a convict for seven years, and conducting himself well in the mean time, he obtained a ticket of leave in 1828. After he had been two years in the colony, I recommended and forwarded his application to the Governor for the indulgence of having his wife and children sent out to him at the expense of the Government; and, as his conduct previously had been unexceptionable, his petition was granted. His wife, however, having no idea of there being any such honest way of getting out to Botany Bay, had, previous to the arrival of the Governor's recommendation in behalf of herself and her children, committed some act of grand larceny just sufficient to insure her transportation for seven years-expressly, I believe, with a view to rejoin her husband.* Murphy had got some intelligence of the circumstance before his wife's arrival, from some fellow-countryman, who had in the mean time arrived in the colony in a similar way, and requested my brother to apply for her as a maidservant. This was accordingly done; and Mary O'Brien, a tall, stout, raw-boned Irish woman, who might otherwise have been sent to a distance of two hundred miles

I have reason to believe that the instances in which crimes are com mitted merely for the purpose of insuring the transportation of the criminal, are very few in comparison with the gross number of convicts transported. A different idea is entertained I am aware; I apprehend,' however, without just grounds.

in an opposite direction, was marched up one morning to the kitchen of my house in Sydney, to wait for a conveyance to Hunter's River, and learned to her inexpressible joy, that she was in a few days to rejoin her husband. Murphy and his wife were for some time employed in charge of the dairy on my brother's farm. They afterwards rented a few acres of land a few miles off on the bank of the river, and have since done exceedingly well. They have now a colonial family of one or two children, and no fewer than sixteen head of cattle.

The ninth was an Irishman from Dublin, a convict for seven years, who obtained a ticket of leave and rented a few acres of alluvial land on Hunter's River, after having served four years on my brother's farm. He had previously been quite unaccustomed to agricultural labour, but had acquired so much knowledge of the operations of Australian husbandry during his term of bondage, and was withal so industrious, that, in little more than twelve months after he began to fell the first tree on the few acres of thickly wooded land he had rented, he had upwards of a hundred bushels of wheat to dispose of, besides a considerable quantity of maize. This man had a wife in Dublin, for whom the Government had agreed to provide a passage out, but he had not heard of her from the time of his leaving Ireland.

The tenth was an Englishman, an industrious man, who has lately formed a joint-stock concern with the individual I have just mentioned.

The eleventh was a Scotchman from Fife, who had twice attempted to escape from the colony, in conse

quence, I believe, of the hard usage he had experienced at the hands of some of the other convict-labourers on the estate of his first master, Sir John Jamison, K.G.V., from having given information against one of them for stealing his master's property. He was unsuccessful, however, on both occasions, and, on being apprehended the second time, he was sent to the penal settlement of Moreton Bay for two years. On his return to Sydney and his being again assignable, I was induced, from having seen him in the jail on his way to the penal settlement, and felt an interest in his case, to apply for him for mybrother, to whom he was accordingly assigned. He was placed in a situation of trust on my brother's farm, and acquitted himself well. On obtaining his ticket of leave, he rented, in conjunction with another Scotchman in similar circumstances, fifty acres of alluvial land in the district of Hunter's River; and, when I last heard of him, he and his partner had cleared and cropped about eight acres of their land with wheat, maize, and tobacco.

The twelfth was an Irishwoman, a widow; whose only son had also been convicted and transported at the same time, I believe for the same offence, and was assigned to a retired military officer residing at Hunter's River. When the mother obtained her ticket of leave, she was hired by my brother's family as a housemaid at a dollar a week; but when her son also obtained his freedom, they both took a small farm on lease in the district, on which they now reside and are doing well.

There are many individual cases which have incidentally fallen under my own observation in the colony,

VOL. II.

B

in which a much higher degree of worldly prosperity had been attained than in any of those I have just mentioned. Such cases, indeed, could not be considered so decisive in regard to the general working of the system of transportation, as the list I have now given. It may be worth while, however, to detail one or two of the cases I allude to.

I had occasion to visit the settlement of Illawarra, about seventy-five miles to the southward of Sydney, in the month of April, 1830. The journey being too long for a single day's ride, I had to spend a night by the way. The house of a magistrate of the territory, whose cordial hospitality I had repeatedly experienced on former visits to the interior, lay near my route; but, choosing rather to confer than to receive a favour, I turned aside to the little cottage of a small settler, who I knew had arrived in the colony as a convict, though he had been free at the time I allude to for many years. The settler had originally been a Presbyterian from the north of Ireland. He had enlisted in a Scotch regiment quartered in the north of England, whither I understood he had gone as a petty dealer or hawker. Having committed some crime, however, of a minor character, he was sentenced to seven years' transportation. His wife, whom he had married in the colony on obtaining his freedom, was a native of the south of Scotland. Her mother had died when she was very young; and her father, who I understood had been a person of indifferent character, had married a second time, and left the children of his former wife to find their way through the world as they best could. I have reason to believe,

however, that both husband and wife were not merely outwardly reformed, but really and sincerely penitent; and from the gratification which my tarrying for the night under their roof afforded them, I could both perceive and feel that when one has nothing else to give than that friendly countenance which the Word of God imperatively calls for, on behalf of those who are turning from the error of their ways, there is nevertheless a deep and affecting meaning in the Scripture maxim, It is more blessed to give than to receive.

"I bought this farm," the settler told me in the course of my visit, "the year I got my liberty. It's a thirty-acre farm-very good land, Sir; and I was to pay a hundred pounds for it, for you know it was cleared but not stumped.* The year I got it I only put in four acres of wheat, for it was rather late in the season. The wheat was very cheap that year; but the next year I put in fifteen acres with the hoe-all with my own hands—and I had as many bushels off it as there are days in the year" (i. e. 365 bushels, or 243 bushels per acre). "The wheat was very dear that season, and I sold a great part of my crop at 14s. 6d., but the cheapest I sold was half-a-guinea a bushel; and I cleared my farm that year. I lived in that hut you see till the debt was paid, and then I built this weatherboarded house. We have every thing comfortable nowplenty of wheat, corn, potatoes, and every thing else we require. Indeed, it's a good country, Sir, for an industrious man. At home I would only have had a

I. e. the roots of the trees were left standing in the ground.