the master; the presumption always against the accused; the
dreadful nature of several of the punishments--doubtless created in many
the recklessness of defiance and despair. A prisoner's sentence might be
extended one or three years; he might be doomed to a penal settlement
and chains. Nor could he liberate himself from his servitude: he came
back from the triangles or road party, and stood at his master's door.

The determined resistance of change, except for punishment; the
indissoluble tie of men to masters--was one part of Arthur's plan. The
knowledge that submission was the only chance of happiness, caused many
to yield to their destiny without a struggle; and where masters were
humane, the connection lasted, without murmuring or oppression, until
the close; but with many more, it was a period of misery, mental and
bodily--the fierce passions breaking into open war, and seeking nothing
but revenge or freedom. The rolls of the muster-master exhibit curious
instances of this long struggle: there are several now before the
writer, in which punishments succeed each other with a frequency so
terrible, that the mind is only relieved by the belief that sensibility
is destroyed by incurable misery.

Governor Arthur addressed a despatch, on "secondary punishments," to
Viscount Goderich, intended to answer the report of the select committee
of 1832. He thought the witnesses were not conversant with the state of
the prisoners--a fact not surprising, since even the effect of English
penitentiaries was debated under their very walls. The gentle system of
Governor Macquarie was a tradition among the criminal population of
Great Britain; but in this country, colonised at a later date, and by
settlers of a higher class, the advantages of the convict were small,
and his control more complete. Arthur thus delineated the condition of
the assigned servant: deprived of indulgence, living in the interior,
employed in clearing and cultivating forest land, allowed no wages;
idleness, even looks betraying an insurgent spirit, exposing him to the
chain gang or the triangle; deprived of liberty, subject to the caprice
of a family, and to the most summary laws. He was a slave, except that
his master was not trusted with the lash, and his claim for service
terminable. True, he was well fed, while many in England labored hard,
and yet were hungry and poor; but nothing reconciled the prisoner to
bondage: he compared his condition not with the