“Don’t you think, Joshua, this game of yours is rather dangerous?  Why, it’s nothing better than cattle stealing; and I’ve heern folks say at one time it was a hanging matter.  You may be found out some day by an unlucky chance, and then what will you do?”

“You mustn’t call it cattle stealing, Neddy; that doesn’t sound well,” said Joshua.  “I call it back pay for work and labour done.  I have good reasons for it.  I was sent out for stealing a horse, which I never did steal; I only bought it cheap for a couple of pounds.  They sent me to the island, and I worked seven years for a settler for nothing.  Now I put it to you, Neddy, as an honest and sensible man, Am I to get no pay for that seven years’ work?  And how am I to get it if I don’t take it myself?  The Government will give me no pay; they’d give me another seven years if they could.  But you see, there are no peelers here, no beaks, and no blooming courts, so I intend to make hay while the sun shines, which means tallow in these times.  All these settlers gets as much work out of Government men as they can get for nothing, and if you says two words to ’em they’ll have you flogged.  So while I does my seven years I says nothing, but I thinks, and I makes up my mind to have it out of ’em when my time comes.  And I say it’s fair and honest to get your back wages the best way you can.  These settlers are all tarred with the same brush; they make poor coves like us work for ’em, and flog us like bullocks, and then they pretend they are honest men.  I say be blowed to such honesty.”

“But if you are caught, Joshua, what then?”

“Well, we must be careful.  I don’t think they’ll catch me in a hurry.  You see, I does my business quick:  cuts out the brand and burns it first thing, and always turns out beasts I don’t want directly.”

Other men followed the example of Joshua, so that between troubles with the black men, troubles with the white men, and the want of a market for his stock, the settler’s days were full of anxiety and misery.  And, in addition, the Government in Sydney was threatening him with a roaming taxgatherer under the name of a Commissioner of Crown Lands, to whom was entrusted the power of increasing or diminishing assessments at his own will and pleasure.  The settler therefore bowed down before the lordly tax-gatherer, and entertained him in his hut with all available hospitality, with welcome on his lips, smiles on his face, and hatred in his heart.

The fees and fines collected by the Commissioners all over New South Wales had fallen off in one year to the extent of sixty-five per cent; more revenue was therefore required, and was it not just that those who occupied Crown lands should support the dignity of the Crown?  Then the blacks had to be protected, or otherwise dealt with.  They could not pay taxes, as the Crown had already appropriated all they were worth, viz., their country.  But they were made amenable to British law; and in that celebrated case, “Regina v.  Jacky Jacky,” it was solemnly decided by the judge that the aborigines were subjects of the Queen, and that judge went to church on the Sabbath and said his prayers in his robes of office, wig and all.