a fortune.
At least, it may be affirmed of him that in nine cases out of ten he is
decidedly no fool.

These are only a few of the prominent outlines of the type of young man
who, his holiday over, returns unspoiled to work on his own or his
father's estates. Those whose passion for a horse destroys all
self-control, who spend thousands in gambling and betting, who
innocently take every smooth gentleman at his own valuation, are merely
individuals--persons who may as unfailingly be found in England or
elsewhere as in Australia.

Sam Buckley is a typical descendant of the British pioneer colonists, as
every Australian knows. In attempting to give an answer to his own
speculation of 'How would Sam Buckley get on in England?' Clarke
presumably undertook to continue the portrayal of this type. The result,
considered apart from the function Calverley fulfils in _Long Odds_,
must be held as emphatically a failure.

Never was a novel written with a franker or more deliberate purpose than
that shown in _For the Term of his Natural Life_. The author had the
twofold object of picturing the dreadful crudities and brutalities of
the early system of convict 'reformation' in Australia, and of
preventing their possible repetition elsewhere. The first of these aims
was attained with a fuller employment, and perhaps more moderate
statement of historical facts, than can be found in any other fiction of
the same class; the second was ineffective, because, when it found
expression, the abuses which had suggested it no longer continued at the
Antipodes, and could not conceivably be repeated on the existing
settlements at Port Blair and Noumea.

The story was written a quarter of a century too late to assist the
abolition of convict transportation to Australia. Had it appeared at the
right time, it might have done much where formal inquiries and the
testimonies of disinterested and humane observers had repeatedly failed.
For sixty years the practice of deporting criminals had been carried on,
upheld in England by official indifference and callousness, and in the
colonies themselves by the greed of a small class of private persons who
grew rapidly wealthy upon the strength of assigned convict labour, until
the free emigrants by the authority of their numbers were able to insist
upon its cessation. For so long as the colonies were willing to receive
a population of criminals, so long was England only too anxious to
supply them and make a