occurred a change of servants, reminded us very much of the teaching imparted at the academy of the estimable Mr. Fagin.
Our informant said that her boys had come racing into the house, in great glee, to tell her of the wonderful tricks that "the new man" had been showing them; how he had abstracted a native's tobacco-pipe from the tight string round his bare arm where a native always sticks his pipe, "without his ever feeling him do it"; and how he had stolen a quantity of grapes from another man, "talking to him all the while he took them." The boys thought "the new man" was as good as a conjuror, and the curiosity of their parents being excited by the report of so much talent they made inquiries as to the cause of their servant's transportation, which, by the way, it is not usual to do in hiring a convict, and learned, as my readers will probably have already anticipated, that he had been a London pickpocket.
With whatever regret the colonists might look forward to the time when contracts for "rations" would be amongst the things of the past, there is no doubt that towards the end of the transportation period the majority of them were heartily sick of the convicts. Some of the settlers candidly owned the mistake which they had committed in supposing that the colony could be benefited by the inmates of English jails, whilst others bitterly complained that Government had broken faith in discontinuing to send picked men only, such as had been brought out in the first ships; forgetting apparently that a better use might possibly be found for offenders who were not incorrigible than transporting them.
