when they assigned a workman, and rapidly withdrew from
engagements no longer necessary. Hundreds of families arrived in a
succession of vessels, and speedily fixed themselves in the interior:
flocks were contracted, herds were slaughtered; fences, homesteads, and
fields of corn divided and dotted the land. The least capital admitted
was L500; and though several evaded the condition, many of the settlers
brought much larger sums. They pursued their improvements, with all the
vigour awakened by novelty, and stimulated by the prospect of
considerable gains. The competition for labor increased, until it
created in the minds of the settlers a feeling of dependance and
obligation--to refuse a supply, had been ruin. It placed before the
prisoners, once again, the examples of emancipist opulence: mechanics
earned more wages than officers of the army; again transportation was
represented as a boon; and then came other changes.

In the official newspaper of 1827, it is stated that 1,000 applications
were registered at Hobart Town. To an English reader, and to a modern
colonist, the notices of this period seem like satire. "Better," remarks
this organ of the higher classes, "better send petitions for more
prisoners--now that applications have lain dormant for twelve months:
some for four, eight, and ten men--than trouble about trial by jury and
representative government. The disappointment, we trust, will be
temporary: when the last vessel sailed, the _York_ was freighting. We
trust the home secretary will consider the deficiency"! The extremely
earnest manner in which these felonious additions were implored, is a
curious relic of a bygone era.[159]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 156: _Collins_, vol. i. p. 267.]

[Footnote 157: _Gazette_, 11th July, 1822.]

[Footnote 158: Bischcoff.]

SECTION XI.

The system of assignment was first established in America (1718), and
continued for fifty-six years: the rigid discipline permitted by the
colonial law, the kind of labor usually performed by the servants, and
their diffusion over an extensive surface, tended alike to restrain, to
reform, and ultimately to merge them undistinguished. Many, endowed with
good natural abilities, such as an accomplished thief usually possesses,
succeeded in their pursuits, and became masters themselves, _by the
purchase_ of the servitude of those afterwards sent out for sale.[160]
Thus, whatever complaints were raised against transportation itself,
non