reformation took place among the convicts residing at a distance from
Sydney. It is nearly impossible that it should be otherwise. The master
can only punish his servant by travelling with him some twenty or thirty
miles to a police magistrate, by which he loses his own time, the labour
of his servant, perhaps for months, if he is condemned to a road gang,
and after his return has little advantage from his services.
Unwillingness to work for a master who has been the cause of his
punishment is a difficult feeling to counteract. The convict has the
game in his own hands: he either does no work, wounds himself, falls
sick, or perhaps, and it is not uncommon, spoils either the materials
entrusted to him, or the tools which have been put into his hands.

"Mr. Busby, when asked respecting the prevalence of bush-rangers, who
are escaped convicts and others who have taken to the bush, says, in his
Evidence (5th Aug. 1831,) that within the last twelve months, or two
years, bush-rangers have been so numerous that it was scarcely possible
to travel a hundred miles on the road without being stopped: there was
scarcely a newspaper, in which there were not two or three instances of
persons, of every rank, being stopped. It was quite an unusual thing
formerly--but of late there has been a regular system of highway
robbery. The laws that have been enacted to put down this horrible state
of things, will serve for an index of the condition of the colony. They
do away with every appearance of personal liberty. 'One act empowered
magistrates to issue a warrant, authorizing constables to enter or break
into any house, within their district or county, by day or night, at
their own discretion; and to seize any person they might suspect to be
highway robbers or burglars; or any individual in the colony, without
any warrant or authority, may take another into custody, on the mere
suspicion that he is a convict illegally at large: if it appear to the
magistrate that he had a just or probable cause for suspicion, he is