humanity is landed on their coasts in spite of preventive measures, and instances occurred under our own knowledge of men with conditional pardons having left Western Australia for Adelaide, and successfully running the blockade.
One of these adventurers had married an emigrant girl who sympathized but little in his desire to get away, and urged upon him that it was better to remain where his past life was already known, than to live elsewhere in continual dread of recognition. However, her arguments were no match for his determination, and, having contrived to land in Adelaide without detection, he sent for her to join him there, though not till after the lapse of so many months as made us fear that he intended to cut himself altogether adrift from his wife. A letter that he wrote us, full of joy on meeting her again, was a satisfactory proof of the injustice of our apprehensions.
The conferring of conditional pardons came to an end before our return to England, and, though their abolition was a matter of necessity if the other colonies were to be kept in good humour, yet it bore hard upon some individuals who wished to recover their respectability, and were now, as they said, deprived of all incitement to good behaviour by being compelled to remain for the full length of their sentence in no better position than that of prisoners released upon their ticket-of-leave, unable to be abroad after ten at night, or to carry a gun, or to remove into another district without a written pass which must be visé on reaching a police-station.
A conditional pardon, on the other hand, had invested its owner with a kind of status, which a man so much valued that it was a pledge for improvement in his
