ht
for, and still more rarely obtained by the injured convict.

With regard to the general conduct of assigned agricultural labourers,
there was a considerable diversity of opinion. The evidence, however, of
Sir G. Arthur, appears to your Committee to be conclusive on this point,
with regard to which he wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies
in the following terms:

"You cannot, my Lord, have an idea of the vexations which accompany the
employment of convicts or of the vicissitudes attendant upon their
assignment. Their crimes and misconduct involve the settlers in daily
trouble, expense, and disappointment. The discipline and control of the
convicts in Van Diemen's Land is carried, perhaps, to a higher degree
than could have ever been contemplated. Many of the convicts have been
greatly reformed when in the service of considerate and judicious
masters; but, with all this abatement, there is so much peculation, so
much insubordination, insolence, disobedience of lawful orders, and so
much drunkenness, that reference to the magisterial authority is
constant, and always attended with loss of time and expense to the
settlers. There can be no doubt things appear better in the colony than
they really are; for, in numberless instances, masters are known to
submit to peculation rather than incur the additional expense of
prosecuting their servants. Two hundred felons, after having been for a
longtime under confinement in the gaols or hulks of England, and
subsequently pent up on board a transport, are placed in charge of the
masters or their agents to whom they have been assigned. The master has
then to take the convict to his home (either to the other extremity of
the island, a distance of 140 miles, or nearer, as the case may be), and
well would it be if he could get him quietly there, but the contrary is
of too frequent occurrence. Either with some money the convict has
secreted, or from the bounty of some old acquaintance, the assigned
servant, now relieved for the first time for some months from personal
restraint, eludes the vigilance of his new master, finds his way into a
public-house, and the first notice the settler has of his servant, for
whom he has travelled to Hobart Town, for whose clothing he has paid the
Government, for whose comfort he has, perhaps, made other little
advances, is, that he is lodged in the watch-house with loss of half his
clothing, or committed to gaol for felony."

The members o