prescribed by the crown, or to alter or
depart from its provisions, without express authority.[259]

The demands of the settlers for laborers soon fell far short of the
supply. The written contracts for the passholders in the first stages of
service bound the master to pay over a portion of their wages to the
crown: this course was troublesome. Thus few, except in the last stage
of their service, were able to obtain employment at all; and the
graduated scale of payment fell to the ground. The accumulation at the
hiring depots, sometimes to the number of 4,000, who could obtain no
engagement, induced the governor to urge their useful employment in
public works. He stated that neither private individuals nor the
colonial treasury could afford to employ them in improvements of
prospective utility, and recommended that a fixed moderate payment
should be accepted, in return for the service they might perform. The
reply of his lordship was decided:--"If," he observed, "the free
inhabitants cannot purchase the labor we have to sell, at a price which
it is worth our while to accept, it remains for us to consider whether
other advantageous employment cannot be found." "The necessaries of life
may be produced to such an extent, as to render the convicts independent
of the free colonists, who are not entitled to claim any compensation
for the inconvenience with which their presence may be attended." His
lordship proposed that new lands should be surveyed, cultivated, and
sold for the advantage of the imperial treasury; and thus the government
might assert "its independence of the settlers," and teach them to
"appreciate correctly the value of convict labor."[260]

The defiant tone of this despatch, and its contemptuous reference to the
settlers, determined the question of transportation.[261] The partizans
of abolition could assail the system at its foundation. Thenceforth the
interests of the colonists, moral and material, were obviously one. The
crown was to compete in the market with the farmer and the landowner;
and the labor market to be overruled by official contrivance, for the
benefit of the imperial treasury.

The colonial newspapers were filled with notices of robberies, and the
complaints of employers. A rapid emigration took place: free laborers
and mechanics sold their properties, acquired by years of toil, often
for a trifling sum; and the immigrants, brought to the colony at great
public and private cost, almost u