Of the state of society in the towns of these colonies, a general idea may be formed from a description of Sydney, according to the accounts given of it, by the Chief Police Magistrate and by Mr. Justice Burton.  In 1836 Sydney covered an area of about 2,000 acres and contained about 20,000 inhabitants; of this number 3,500 were convicts, most of them in assigned service, and about 7,000 had probably been prisoners of the Crown.  These, together with their associates amongst the free population, were persons of violent and uncontrollable passions, which most of them possessed no lawful means of gratifying; incorrigibly bad characters, preferring a life of idleness and debauchery by means of plunder to one of honest industry.  Burglaries and robberies were frequently perpetrated by convict servants in the town and its vicinity, sometimes even in the middle of the day.  No town offered so many facilities for eluding the vigilance of the police as Sydney did.  The unoccupied bush near and within it afforded shelter to the offender and hid him from pursuit.  He might steal or hire a boat and in a few minutes place an arm of the sea between himself and his pursuers.  The want of continuity in the buildings afforded great facilities for lying in wait for opportunities of committing crime, for instant concealment on the approach of the police, and for obtaining access to the backs of houses and shops; and the drunkenness, idleness, and carelessness of a great proportion of the inhabitants afforded innumerable opportunities and temptations, both by day and night, for those who chose to live by plunder.  The greater portion of the shopkeepers and the middling class had been convicts, for the tradesmen connected with the criminal population have an advantage over free emigrants.

Those of the emancipists who were possessed of property had generally acquired it by dishonest means, by keeping grog-shops, gambling-houses, by receiving stolen goods, and by other nefarious practices; they led a life of gross licentiousness; but their wealth and influence were such that one-fourth of the jurors who served in the civil and criminal courts during the years 1834, 1835, and 1836, belonged to their number.  More immorality prevailed in Sydney than in any other town of the same size in the British Dominions; there, the vice of drunkenness had attained its highest pitch; the quantity of spirits consumed in Sydney was enormous; even throughout the whole of New South Wales the annual average, for every human being in the colony had reached four gallons a head.  Such, according to the authorities already quoted, are the towns to which transportation has given birth; and such are the inmates furnished to them by the criminal tribunals of this country.