can be selected whose lives are not of a vicious description, who do not
indulge in dishonest practices of one sort or another, and who have not
risen to wealth by fostering and practising some species of villany.
These men procure convicts to be assigned to them, who become members of
the families, and assist them in carrying on their various frauds. In
Sydney the grog shops are very numerous, and grog shops are receiving
houses. A constant trade in stolen goods is going on between Sydney and
the remotest parts of the colony, and even between Sydney and this
country. The convicts in remote settlements have no means generally of
indulging in licentiousness, but they see constantly before them the
freed labourer who has, and they burn to enjoy similar privileges: and
should their place of occupation be too remote from a theatre of
indulgence, they get a week of holiday at Sydney, where they arrive in
numbers, and, for the time they stay, wallow in every species of
debauchery. In such a state of society the public standard of morality
must necessarily fall to a very low degree. The leaven spreads from the
corrupted part into the whole mass. Just as the slang of London thieves
is become the classical language of Sydney, so do necessarily a
familiarity with crime, hatred to law, and contempt for virtue, make
their way into the minds and hearts of those who are untainted with
actual crime. So far from a reformation being even begun in New South
Wales, it would seem that roguery had been carried a degree beyond even
the perfection it has reached here. Property is very insecure in Sydney,
and the most extraordinary robberies take place. Mr. James Walker, in
his evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, says 'the
colony has a curious effect upon the most practised thieves in this
country; one of the most experienced thieves in London has _something to
learn_ when he comes out there; probably he would be robbed the first
night he came into his hut.' This was the answer given by an experienced
settler to the question, whether he thought any considerable degree of