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9. Sir Eardley Wilmot had sailed for the colony in 1843, and upon him devolved the task of bringing the new scheme into operation. The difficulty arising from the want of demand for the services of the convicts almost immediately made itself felt.

Parliamentary

Paper, No. 36 of 1846, page 26. August 31, 1844. Parliamentary

Paper of 1845, page 91.

In order to endeavour to meet this defect, Lord July 27, 1844. Stanley in 1844 provided for making conditional pardons extend to all the Australian colonies in stead of only Van Diemen's Land; and also directed that efforts should be made to employ the convicts in different kinds of labour, useful to themselves, or calculated to diminish the expenses of their maintenance.

10. As this question of the mode of employ- ment became one of the principal subjects of cor- respondence at that time, it may be convenient to state what passed on a somewhat fuller scale than the preceding rapid review of earlier transactions. In Lord Stanley's general instructions of Novem- ber 1842, the plan was that the probation gangs should be employed in the service of the Govern- ment, and, "with rare exceptions, in the unsettled districts." It was estimated that provision should be made for probation gangs amounting to 8000 persons. The directions were, that these men "must be hutted or quartered in situations where they can undertake and execute in concert works

of public utility." In a despatch of 23rd August, Not included in the Printed 1842, the Governor was instructed that no more

for the Colonial Government than for private indi- viduals were the convicts to be employed, without their services being fully paid for to the British Treasury. On the 5th and 31st October, 1843, however, the Governor sent home some regulations from which it was inferred that the Comptroller- General contemplated the employment of the con- victs almost exclusively for the benefit of the colony. This was disapproved. Lord Stanley's despatch of the 26th of March, 1844, stated,--

Papers.

"Such is not the view of Her Majesty's Government. Parliamentary Paper, page 17.

The primary object to be kept in sight in the employment

of convicts, is the raising by them the produce necessary for their subsistence, and the consequent diminution of the expenses now entailed on the mother-country. The benefit

to accrue from their labour to Van Diemen's Land, import- ant as I acknowledge it to be, is still but a secondary and subordinate consideration,"

Vide Parliamentary Papers of

1845, passim.

Lord Stanley, August 31, 1844. Parliamentary Papers of 1845,

page 31.

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Throughout the end of 1843, however, and be- ginning of 1844, the Governor continued to urge the universal distress in the colony, and the impos- sibility that either the local Government or private individuals should employ convicts, even at the moderate sum charged for them per day by the Commissariat. In a despatch of May 1844, he said that the difficulty of getting into service con tinued, and that the passholders

"being thus thrown on the world with nothing but their labour to support them, and no labour being in demand, either starve or steal."

He concluded as follows:-

"Unless some means are adopted to employ the ticket-of- leave men and conditional-pardon men, who, as they receive their indulgences are thrown on their own resources, I am fearful we shall not only have a pauper population, but a thieving population thrown upon us."

Before this last despatch had arrived, Lord Stanley had answered the others upon the same subject. His Lordship felt unable to accede to the Governor's suggestion that the sum paid by the Colonial Government for superintendents and overseers should be accepted as an equivalent for the labour of the probation gangs. He ob- served that it amounted to a proposal for executing all manner of works for the benefit of the colony, for a fixed annual sum of 40007., the rest of the expense being defrayed by this country; that the colonists had no claim, either individually or col- lectively, to be supplied with convict labour, either gratuitously or on very low terms, unless the interests of the British Treasury required it; that consequently, if neither the Colonial Treasury, nor individuals, could afford to pay for the labour of convicts, they must be employed on all such labour as would relieve the British Treasury of part of the expense of their maintenance; i. e. st. In raising their own food; building their own gaols, school- houses, or hospitals; making their own clothes and implements of labour. 2nd. In performing such work as might be required for the naval and military, and other imperial departments. And, 3rd. I there should be still a superfluity of labour, in preparing wild lands for settlement, the excess of price realized at their sale to be carried to the British Treasury.

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Reference :-

C.O.885

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