previous to
embarkation, and during the weariness of a long voyage.

As soon as a convict vessel reaches its place of destination, a report
is made by the surgeon-superintendent to the governor. A day is then
appointed for the colonial secretary or for his deputy to go on board to
muster the convicts, and to hear their complaints, if they have any to
make. The male convicts are subsequently removed to the convict
barracks; the females to the penitentiaries. In New South Wales,
however, regulations have lately been established, by which, in most
cases, female convicts are enabled to proceed at once from the ship to
private service. It is the duty of an officer, called the principal
superintendent of convicts, to classify the newly-arrived convicts, the
greater portion of whom are distributed amongst the settlers as
assigned servants; the remainder are either retained in the employment
of the government, or some few of them are sent to the penal
settlements.

On the whole, your Committee may assert that, in the families of
well-conducted and respectable settlers, the condition of assigned
convicts is much the same as the condition of similar descriptions of
servants in this country; but this is by no means the case in the
establishment of all settlers. As the lot of a slave depends upon the
character of his master, so the condition of a convict depends upon the
temper and disposition of the settler to whom he is assigned. On this
account Sir George Arthur, late Governor of Van Diemen's Land, likened
the convict to a slave, and described him "as deprived of liberty,
exposed to all the caprice of the family to whose service he may happen
to be assigned, and subject to the most summary laws; his condition"
(said Sir George) "in no respect differs from that of the slave, except
that his master cannot apply corporal punishment by his own hands or
those of his overseer, and has a property in him for a limited period.
Idleness and insolence of expression, or of looks, anything betraying
the insurgent spirit, subject him to the chain-gang or the triangle, or
hard labour on the roads."

On the other hand, a convict, if ill-treated, may complain of his
master; and if he substantiate his charge the master is deprived of his
services; but for this purpose the convict must go before a bench,
sometimes a hundred miles distant, composed of magistrates, most of whom
are owners of convict labour. Legal redress is therefore rarely soug