striving to obtain as large a share as possible of all the expenditure connected with the maintenance and feeding of the convicts, whilst anxious to monopolize the benefits accruing from their labour as well. However this may be it cannot be denied that any work which is not thoroughly a colonial work, such as bridges, piers, or roads, but conducive only to the interests of the Home Government and its officials, such as this new building in question, is pretty sure to be unpopular in Swan River. The settlers would like to contract for the supply of all the necessaries used by the convict labourers at a good price, and then to have the entire benefit of their labour in addition, and seem scarcely satisfied unless this is the case, even though the Governor may have exerted himself to the utmost in striving to develop the country as rapidly as possible.
Having touched upon this subject, I may here notice that the existence and employment of convicts is much less striking to the eye of a stranger in Perth, and in the country districts, than it is at Fremantle, owing chiefly to the fact that it is only at the latter place, and close to the "Establishment," that any fettered men are ever seen at work. Of necessity irons must be used upon some of the thoroughly unruly prisoners, and a chain-gang must be a sight sometimes seen in any country where a large number of men are undergoing the sentences due to their crimes; but it is only at Fremantle that men under severe discipline are ever met with in the streets, and though you may there pass a body of fifty or a hundred men marching back from their work in chains, and escorted by warders with loaded and cocked revolvers in their
