,
however, among the emancipated convicts of property exceptions from this
prevalent depravity; rare, indeed, and on that account the more
honourable."[199] And numberless, in the earlier history of New South
Wales, are the evil consequences which are recorded to have arisen from
the necessity which then existed of employing either convicts, or else
men recently emancipated, in places of the highest trust and importance.
One striking example may suffice; and it is believed that no injustice
is done to the class of men now alluded to, when it is stated that the
guilty parties were persons belonging to that body. Soon after the
departure of Governor Hunter, in 1800, it was discovered that the clerks
who were admitted to the registers of the terms of the transportation of
the convicts, had altered the sentences of nearly 200 prisoners, on
receiving from each a sum equal in value to ten or twelve pounds.[200]
Of these examples the early history of the colony is full; but, in later
years, it may be hoped, that time, and public opinion, and the tide of
emigration, have combined to render the conduct of persons belonging
to this class less generally objectionable than it formerly was. The
greater portion of the shop-keepers, and what may be called the middling
classes in Sydney, were emancipists; and their wealth and influence were
so great, that, during the years 1834, 1835, and 1836, one-fourth of the
jurors who served in the civil and criminal courts belonged to that
body. These persons are often very little educated; and young men
possessed of from 1000_l._ to 2000_l._ a-year in stock, can sometimes
neither read nor write. Cock-fighting, driving, and badger-baiting, are
pursuits that occupy youths of this class very frequently; and a showy,
tawdry style of dress, engages the attention of the young women.
Certainly, it is not of materials of this kind, that the English
constitution would have juries composed; and it is not surprising that
so large a proportion of jurors, who have themselves once stood at the
bar of justice, should be the means of carrying undue partiality for the
guilty into the jurors' box, and also of keeping out of that responsible
station all those who can in any way escape its duties.[201] Respectable
men will not, if they can avoid it, sit in the same box with men who go
in with their minds entirely made up to acquit the guilty, whatever may
be the tenor of the evidence to which they have just been list