cities can picture to themselves what these criminals were like.
When the lives of all depended on the security of the public stores, to judge the man who was responsible by the number of thieves he hanged, or the amount of flogging he ordered them, is absurd. The true test of the man's character is to be sought, not in his manner of dealing with the idle and vicious, but in his treatment of the few who were men enough to deserve sympathy and encouragement.
In an old churchyard at Campbelltown, about thirty-five miles from Sydney, there is a tombstone erected to the memory of James Ruse, who died in 1837. Collins describes him as 'the first settler in this country, who, when he had been upon his ground for fifteen months, having got in his crop of corn, declared himself as relinquishing his claim to any further provisions from the store, and said that he was able to support himself by the produce of his farm. He had shown himself an industrious man; and the Governor, being satisfied that he could do without any further aid from the stores, consented to his proposal, and informed him that he should be forthwith put in possession of an allotment of thirty acres of ground in the situation he then occupied.'
Tench tells us that Ruse, a convict, 'was cast for seven years at Bodmin assizes in August 1782; he lay five years in prison and on board the Dunkirk hulk at Plymouth, and then was sent to this country.
