at the cost of all his little savings, from an appointment which he had received as permanent, and it was also hard that those who had learned to discern the merits of the master should be deprived of the benefit of them for their children, but in a few weeks after reaching Melbourne he obtained the charge of a school so far superior both in importance and in remuneration to the one which he had left, that his enemies, in causing him to quit Western Australia, eventually proved his best friends.
In the houses of settlers, who lived at a distance from any Government school, we sometimes found a convict engaged as tutor to the children and keeper of the farm accounts, but employment of this kind for those released prisoners who are capable of undertaking it is not so easily obtained by them as might be supposed. The truth is, that learning is of less value in a rough and but partially cleared country than a pair of hard hands, and the consequent difficulty that an educated man of the bond class finds in earning mere bread is sometimes so great that even the victims of his dishonesty at home would perhaps feel satisfied that his punishment was proportioned to his offence, if they could see his struggle for a bare existence. There is great inequality in the penalty of transportation, and although it may be truly urged that the educated criminal deserves a heavier punishment than his illiterate neighbour, yet the fact remains the same, and whilst the former class of offender is sometimes on the verge of starvation, the agricultural convict can become a landed proprietor on no worse conditions than those of being contented to work hard and to forswear drink.
