out. In the country districts there was still a paucity of specie; business was conducted by cheques and barter. Few settlers kept money in the house; even roadside bills were paid in cheques or orders. A man's order might circulate for months before specie was paid for it. If his credit was known to be good, his IOU. was deemed as useful an exchange as a pound note. The absence of crime did not altogether prove reformation; to some extent it denoted the absence of opportunities.
In the committal of crime a man's ancient habits and predilections told against him. Ticket-of-leave men seeking employment invariably returned to the avocations they followed at home; the same applied to their crimes. The police learnt the science of crime; inductive and deductive reasonings were unnecessary. The convict returned to his special branch of crime; if he had been a burglar at home, he was a burglar in the colony, and so forth. When the report reached the policeman that a burglary had been committed, he consulted his book to discover which convicts were out on ticket of leave or conditional pardon in that particular district. Then he saw which were transported for burglary. He had his clue, and quickly arrested the burglar. In the vast number of cases this was a reliable indicator. But though there was not much crime, there was a deal of brutish and sottish drinking. Governor Kennedy attested before Earl Grey's Committee that the number of persons convicted from 1855 to 1860 before the Court of Quarter Sessions were:—In 1855, 56; 1856, 29; 1857, 15; 1858, 11; 1859, 17; and 1860, 23. This embraces convicts holding the conditional pardon certificate, but not those tried in the lower courts. Were the number of men re-convicted under the Summary Jurisdiction Act included, the figures would be greatly larger.
But many convicts were reformed. Some were so slightly steeped in crime that they required no collegiate training under a moral system. These men, by thrift, industry, and honest living attained good positions, and the respect of their fellow colonists. Even before 1860 several of them possessed stations of freehold and leasehold land, shops, and other businesses. In sorrow and contrition and severe labour they condoned for their offences against the systems of the nation.
It might be thought that the worst class of criminals was not introduced. Comptroller-General Henderson informed the House of Lords Committee, in 1856, that latterly the English officials had sent to Western Australia "the men they do not hang." The most depraved men were being transported, and he represented to the Government that if such a course be continued the system of transportation would soon end. The Committee appointed in 1862, under the chairmanship of Earl Grey, and comprising such men as Lord Naas, Lord Cranworth, E. B. Bouverie, Sir J. S. Pakington, S. H. Walpole, J. W. Henley, Sir A. J. E. Cockburn, Horatio Waddington, Russell Gurney, O'Connor Don, and H. C. E. Childers, affirmed that there was reason to fear that men who were an encumbrance in England were sometimes sent to the colony. More than that:—"It has been shown that in one case the Governor of Chatham Prison was specially instructed to select for embarkation the convicts least fit to be discharged at home." Other testimony proved beyond dispute that men as bad as those sent to Norfolk Island were transported to Western Australia.
With the wholesale introduction of convict men, the disparity of sexes became serious. To obviate danger, what turned out to be dangerous women were introduced from London workhouses, particularly from St. Giles' and St. George's, Bloomsbury. Mr. T. N. Yule asserted before the Committee of the House of Lords that from 1851 to 1856 181 female immigrants had married convicts. The moral deterioration of many was dreadful and baneful. A proportion of those who did not marry did worse, and brothels became fairly numerous. Judging from records of different writers, these women were a most undesirable class. Dread social conditions were introduced which took many years to eradicate. Serious charges were even made against officials for encouraging a nefarious trade. But from the better stamp of immigrant girls the colony gained many benefits.
In 1853 the Duke of Newcastle suggested that convict women should be sent to Western Australia. Those who had heard of the horrors of female convictism in Tasmania and New South Wales recoiled. No state of society could well be more revolting than where female felons were transported. The Western Australian census of 1854 gave the proportion of female to male population as 35 to 100; in 1857 the proportion was 11 to 100. The disparity probably led certain people to favour the introduction of convict women. In May, 1855, Mr. Clifton proposed at a public meeting in Perth that an experimental band of them be tried. Mr. Shenton carried an amendment expressing the meeting's repugnance at introducing so immoral a class. Other meetings were held with similar results. The Imperial authorities temporarily let the matter drop. In 1857, however, the Secretary of State wrote a despatch condemning the advisability of transporting an experimental band of convict women. In May, 1857, a small meeting was held in Fremantle, when resolutions were carried by a bare majority favouring their introduction. A newspaper report said that men drawing public pay carried the resolutions. In June, similar resolutions were carried in the Legislative Council. Six members voted for, and four against female convicts; the Surveyor-General, the Colonial Treasurer, and Messrs. Phillips and Hamersley comprised the minority. Meetings against female convicts were held at York and Bunbury, and a memorial was circulated with a like object. The Colonial Secretary, Mr. Barlee, stated on another occasion in the House that up to 1857 201 marriages between female immigrants and convicts had taken place. The results, he said, were unhappy; the women were indignantly twitted by their shipmates. He considered that because of the disparity of sexes, Western Australia would yet be a "perfect hell on earth." The Home Government wisely determined in 1858 not to transport women.
The narrative demands that publication be given to cases of insubordination and crime. The first danger to the system lay in an act of insubordination in 1854. The Comptroller-General necessarily had supreme power over his prisoners and the administration of his officers. Occasionally the ideal of the system was shattered by the want of wisdom and the carelessness of officers. Attached to the establishment was a Roman Catholic chaplain as well as a representative of the Church of England. The indiscretion of the former precipitated the first trouble.
Early in January, 1854, the Rev. O'Neil, the Roman chaplain, preached a sermon to the convicts which Captain Henderson considered obnoxious. He immediately suspended the Rev. O'Neil. The expressions were calculated to "subvert discipline and overthrow authority." Roman Catholic prisoners took umbrage at the treatment of their chaplain, and a few of them made use of expressions of so mutinous a character that they were ordered to their cells. Before they could be seized their co-religionists rushed to their assistance; and their yells were described as fearful. Even the townspeople heard the dreadful din and, fearing a general outbreak, some armed themselves and barricaded their doors. Within twenty minutes seventy armed pensioners from the barracks
