In other convict settlements the emancipated intermarried with the voluntary settlers; they could not do so to any extent in Western Australia. Although convicts sometimes acquired wealth, and even obtained notoriety in local journalism and commercial pursuits, and responsible positions under Government, no matter how well-behaved they were, they remained outcasts from the best society. If the free met the bond in the street he passed him by as did the Pharisee of old. The respectable labourer would not commune with the ticket-of-leave man in the pot-house; he followed the example of his master, and was virtuously complacent. Mr. Willoughby averted that such a condition was unprecedented in convict history. The same gentleman reported that drunkenness was well nigh universal, that the ordinary class of convicts lived without regard for the outward observances of religion, and that being restrained by no ties—families, wives, or other civilising tendencies—they hung loosely on society. Captain Du Cane, who was attached to the local convict system, told Earl Grey's Committee in 1863 that no injurious moral influence was even at that time apparent in the colony.
Mr. Willoughby, after travelling through the settled districts, wrote that a visitor saw little that was exceptional. Even amid such a heterogenous people there were quiet, peaceful, village-like communities with English customs, constitutions, and laws. It was only the clang of fetters and the occasional sight of road parties that reminded him that instruments of torture and barbarism existed. Occasionally, where even the air hushed freedom and liberty, he looked with sad eyes on the opposite of bondage and servitude.
Pensioners and expiree convicts were a considerable feature of town and rural populations. In 1864 there were 570 expiree and conditional pardon men, against 316 free adults, in the Northam and Toodyay districts; they owned freehold valued at £4,000; crops (1,693 acres), at £5,500; stock at £2,500; and other personal property at £9,000. Those pensioners who arrived in the colony last were kept on active duty; they were envied by the older men because they had a larger salary. In most towns they were awarded allotments of land which convicts cleared; policemen for a time got grants of fifty acres, which were cleared by forced labour. The pay of pensioners and warders was ridiculously small, and a man with family responsibilities seldom had any money by him. The annual increase for warders was £1, so that it would take fifty years to become eligible to £102 a year, supposing the original salary was £1 a week. The sight of pensioners in their peculiar garments, scores of miles back in Western Australian bush, conjured up, said Willoughby, recollections of Chelsea.
There were changes to be found in the old rural settler. He became a conservative in everything but what appealed to his pecuniary interests, and in later years he became somewhat conservative even in that. He was not so well informed in contemporary art and literature as when he came to the colony; years of dispiriting drudgery had even stultified the impulse for improvement. The lives and minds of his children were sometimes exceedingly primitive; so remote were they from civilisation and culture, that there was little opportunity to become otherwise. But they were as hospitable as their fathers before them. A portion of expiree men became itinerant beggars wandering from district to district, sleeping in the bush or in outhouses, and begging food and money at every roadside farmhouse. When, by hook or by crook, they obtained money they quickly spent it in the nearest inn, and finally, perhaps, were locked up. The convictions in the courts were greatly increased by these means. Indeed, the numbers of beggars caused thinking people to fear that a great burden would ultimately fall on the Government purse. Western Australian witnesses before Earl Grey's Committee—ex-Governor Kennedy, Colonel Henderson, Captain Du Cane, and Mr. Sandford—referred to this evil. Convicts usually styled themselves "Government men," as being more euphonious and less objectionable than "convict" or "felon". They thus came to be largely called by freemen. The same word, indeed, was applied to many things; all waste lands were referred to as "Government lands," convict or other public buildings as "Government buildings." Writes Mrs. Millett:—"The frequent reference in West Australia to the word Government, and the manner in which it was alluded to, might have led one to suppose that it was an imaginary creature whose character varied with that of each person who spoke of it, and with the peculiar views which he or she took of things in general. Thus, I have known it quoted by children to sanction their having pelted a turkey to death, on the plea that 'Mother says as how it is Government ground, and we may do as we like.'" If some application to officialdom was refused, the remark was indignantly made that "the Government had a 'down' on him."
According to his own testimony the convict was the most imposed upon creature imaginable. Trial by jury resulted only in getting the wrong man punished. Nearly every convict was innocent of crime; he was the scapegoat for another man's offence. A feud existed between expiree men and pensioners, owing to their relative positions in the colony; the old convict complained that the pensioner was the greatest of all rogues, only he had never been found out. The plenitude and cheapness of convict labour erected disabilities in the way of free labourers. The latter were practically elbowed to the wall for a time, and hence suffering and irritation were accentuated among that class. Where possible these toilers left the colony for the goldfields. Many of those emigrants despatched by the Imperial Government to balance forced emigration remained in Western Australia but a short time. A prevalent source of discontent among convict labourers was the custom of certain masters to pay them by truck. The employer supplied the ticket-of-leave man with boots, ready-made clothes, groceries, flour, and meat, and deducted the amounts from his wages—a system easily abused. It is said that the worker was charged at times enormous prices for these supplies, and thus when the term of his service expired he found, probably, that there was no money to come to him, although he expected many pounds. The system was frequently attacked previous to and anterior to penal settlement days, and the free labourer suffered with the forced. A better scheme, said Mrs. Millett, could not have been devised to disgust rogues with honest labour. It disheartened and therefore hardened them.
Before proceeding to record the revivifying of industry during this period the various points of the convict annals up to 1868 must be referred to. The Duke of Newcastle replied, in March, 1861, to the resolutions of the Legislative Council concerning the apparent dilatoriness of the Imperial Government in giving the colony a regular supply of convicts. He explained that, owing to the limited number of offenders being sentenced to periods of imprisonment of sufficient length to fit them for transportation, the authorities were not able to send out the number required by the colony, although they were sensible of
