should receive wages at all, food, clothing and shelter being all to which they had a right. Cox objected that that would have placed them altogether in the position of slaves. Marsden, after thirty years' experience, could suggest no alternative scheme and yet condemned the one in force. The opinion of the majority was that the Regulations had not sufficient elasticity and gave no opportunity for grading the men according to their merits.
Bigge himself came to the very lame conclusion that Government servants ought not to receive wages but only occasional rewards, and that more settlers should be encouraged to come from England. Thus more employment would be provided for the convicts and less encouragement for them on regaining their freedom to become "prematurely proprietors and masters". Like those who were sheep-farmers, he dwelt much on the moral value of shepherding, and indeed there was a certain fascination in the picture of the London thief watching his lambs beneath the she-oaks and haply repenting on the evil of his past.[1] The ignorant townsman, used to the noise and hubbub of cities, must have trembled at many a ghost in the quiet melancholy of the Australian forest.
Riley, who with the exception of Macarthur was the most far-sighted of the settlers, and who seems to have been slightly inoculated with the theory of free trade, put his finger on the real need of the Colony—free labourers with a knowledge of agriculture. He thought more convicts would then be employed, for "the settlers would be enabled so to extend their cultivation in many instances, that they would require the addition of other servants to assist them. I know that many persons are at this moment prevented entering into the cultivation of hemp and flax solely from the want of servants who are adapted to the raising and preparing these articles, and one man capable of giving directions for the produce of them could give occasion to the employ of many inferior labourers."
He calculated that £30 a head would cover the cost of sending out such labourers, and that immediately on their arrival at Sydney they would find masters ready to give them £20 a year and their board. The masters might then become responsible
- ↑ See Reports III. and I.
