and turned loose to mix with one another in the desert, together with a few task-masters, who were to set them to work in the open wilderness; and with the military, who were to keep them from revolt.  The consequences of this strange assemblage were vice, immorality, frightful disease, hunger, dreadful mortality among the settlers; the convicts were decimated by pestilence on the voyage, and again decimated by famine on their arrival; and the most hideous cruelty was practised towards the unfortunate natives.  Such is the early history of New South Wales.

After sentence of transportation has been passed, convicts are sent to the hulks or gaols, where they remain till the period of their departure arrives.  On board convict vessels the convicts are under the sole control of the surgeon-superintendent, who is furnished with instructions, as to his conduct, from the Admiralty.  The precautions which have been taken against disease, and the better discipline now preserved in these ships, have applied an effectual remedy to the physical evils of the long voyage to Australia, and prevented the mortality amongst the prisoners which prevailed to a fearful extent during the earlier periods of transportation.  Little diminution, however, has taken place in those moral evils, which seem to be the necessary consequences of the close contact and communication between so many criminals, both during the period of confinement previous to embarkation, and during the weariness of a long voyage.

As soon as a convict vessel reaches its place of destination, a report is made by the surgeon-superintendent to the governor.  A day is then appointed for the colonial secretary or for his deputy to go on board to muster the convicts, and to hear their complaints, if they have any to make.  The male convicts are subsequently removed to the convict barracks; the females to the penitentiaries.  In New South Wales, however, regulations have lately been established, by which, in most cases, female convicts are enabled to proceed at once from the ship to private service.  It is the duty of an officer, called the principal superintendent of convicts, to classify the newly-arrived convicts, the greater portion of whom are distributed amongst the settlers as assigned servants; the remainder are either retained in the employment of the government, or some few of them are sent to the penal settlements.

On the whole, your Committee may assert that, in the families of well-conducted and respectable settlers, the condition of assigned convicts is much the same as the condition of similar descriptions of servants in this country; but this is by no means the case in the establishment of all settlers.  As the lot of a slave depends upon the character of his master, so the condition of a convict depends upon the temper and disposition of the settler to whom he is assigned.  On this account Sir George Arthur, late Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, likened the convict to a