slave, and described him “as deprived of liberty, exposed to all the caprice of the family to whose service he may happen to be assigned, and subject to the most summary laws; his condition” (said Sir George) “in no respect differs from that of the slave, except that his master cannot apply corporal punishment by his own hands or those of his overseer, and has a property in him for a limited period.  Idleness and insolence of expression, or of looks, anything betraying the insurgent spirit, subject him to the chain-gang or the triangle, or hard labour on the roads.”

On the other hand, a convict, if ill-treated, may complain of his master; and if he substantiate his charge the master is deprived of his services; but for this purpose the convict must go before a bench, sometimes a hundred miles distant, composed of magistrates, most of whom are owners of convict labour.  Legal redress is therefore rarely sought for, and still more rarely obtained by the injured convict.

With regard to the general conduct of assigned agricultural labourers, there was a considerable diversity of opinion.  The evidence, however, of Sir G. Arthur, appears to your Committee to be conclusive on this point, with regard to which he wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in the following terms: 

“You cannot, my Lord, have an idea of the vexations which accompany the employment of convicts or of the vicissitudes attendant upon their assignment.  Their crimes and misconduct involve the settlers in daily trouble, expense, and disappointment.  The discipline and control of the convicts in Van Diemen’s Land is carried, perhaps, to a higher degree than could have ever been contemplated.  Many of the convicts have been greatly reformed when in the service of considerate and judicious masters; but, with all this abatement, there is so much peculation, so much insubordination, insolence, disobedience of lawful orders, and so much drunkenness, that reference to the magisterial authority is constant, and always attended with loss of time and expense to the settlers.  There can be no doubt things appear better in the colony than they really are; for, in numberless instances, masters are known to submit to peculation rather than incur the additional expense of prosecuting their servants.  Two hundred felons, after having been for a longtime under confinement in the gaols or hulks of England, and subsequently pent up on board a transport, are placed in charge of the masters or their agents to whom they have been assigned.  The master has then to take the convict to his home (either to the other extremity of the island, a distance of 140 miles, or nearer, as the case may be), and well would it be if he could get him quietly there, but the contrary is of too frequent occurrence.  Either with some money the convict has secreted, or from the bounty of some old acquaintance, the assigned servant, now relieved for the first time for some months from personal restraint, eludes the vigilance of his new master, finds his way into a public-house, and the first notice the settler has of his servant, for whom he has travelled to Hobart Town, for whose clothing he has paid the Government, for whose comfort he has, perhaps, made other little advances, is, that he is lodged in the watch-house with loss of half his clothing, or committed to gaol for felony.”