It was with the latter
part of the definition in mind that Clarke told his story. He chose to
represent servitude in the chain-gangs of Van Diemen's Land and Norfolk
Island as the condition of slavery which Sir Richard Bourke and Sir
George Arthur admitted it to be, as the utter failure described by the
experienced Dr. Ullathorne, and as the system recommended by the House
of Commons Committee to be abolished as incapable of improvement and
'remarkably efficient, not in reforming, but still further corrupting
those who undergo punishment.'

The idea which is the ganglion of Clarke's plot was always seen clearly,
but never obsessed his mind as did a cognate theme that of the impetuous
reformer Charles Reade. In his crusade against the form of punishment
known as the 'silent system,' the English novelist obtrudes his moral
with a frequency that weakens the effect of his often splendid
eloquence. The direct opposite of this style is seen in the Australian
novel. The author never openly preaches. His best effects are obtained
by quiet satire conveyed in the gradual limning of his characters, and
by occasional incidents of which each is allowed to give its own lesson
to the reader. The facts have all the advantage of a studiously calm and
impersonal presentation.

In the rapid progress of the plot the reader is kept keenly interested.
If he have an eye for the moral he will detect it at once; if not, there
is no importunate author to force it upon him. In either case he will
find the story an absorbing one. 'It has all the solemn ghastliness of
truth,' said Lord Rosebery, writing to the novelist's widow in 1884. He
confessed that the book had a fascination for him. Not once or twice,
but many times, had he read it, and during his visit to Australia he
spent some time in viewing the scene of the old settlements and
examining the reports upon which the novel is so largely based.

That there are some exaggerations in the treatment of facts need hardly
be stated, but they are few in number, not serious in import, and
outbalanced by numerous cases in which it has been necessary to modify
the description of incidents either too painful or horrible to be fully
depicted. As a compensation for its occasional storical inaccuracy, _His
Natural Life_ is notably free of the melodramatic excesses that most
young writers would have been tempted to commit. Clarke was too good an
artist to think of pleading the sanction of facts for any mi