rmer, and the
other to the hospital for the benefit of the sick.

This order was meant to prevent the selling or interchanging of stolen
goods among the convicts; a measure that appeared to be daily becoming
more necessary. The depredations which were committed, hourly it might be
said, upon the maize, were very serious, and called for the interposition
of some measure that might prevent them, as punishments, however severe,
were not found effectually to answer the end. A convict who lived as a
servant with an officer was tried by the criminal court for robbing his
master, and being found guilty was sentenced to receive three hundred
lashes.

The colony had now been so long established, that many convicts who had
come out in the first fleet, and might be termed the first settlers in
the country, had served the several terms of transportation to which they
had been sentenced. Of the people of this description, some had become
settlers; some had left the country; others, to use their own
expressions, had taken themselves off the stores, that is to say, had
declined receiving any farther provisions from the public stores or doing
any public labour, but derived their support from such settlers or other
persons as could employ and maintain them; while others, with somewhat
more discretion, continued to labour for government, and to receive
their provisions as usual from the commissary. Of the latter description,
fourteen who were indulged with the choice of the place where they were
to labour, preferred the settlement at Sydney, and there had one hut
assigned to them for their residence. To prevent any imposition on the
part of those who professed to be supported by settlers, they were
directed to render an account at the end of each week of their respective
employments; for people who had not any visible means of living would
soon have become nuisances in the settlement.

It required something more than common application to adapt remedies to
the various irregularities which from time to time grew up in the
settlement, and something more than common ingenuity to counteract the
artifices of those whose meditations were hourly directed to schemes of
evasion or depredation.

The natives had not lately given us any interruption by acts of
hostility. Several of their young people continued to reside among us,
and the different houses in the town were frequently visited by their
relations. Very little information that could b