Wales corps,
three natives, and a free woman, wife to one of the convicts. Among the
latter description of persons were some of very bad character; others who
were supposed to have formed a design of escaping from the colony; some
who professed to be flax dressers, and a few artificers who might be
useful at that island.

At the head of a party of convicts who were said to have formed a design
of seizing a boat and effecting their escape, was J. C. Morris, one of
those convicts who left England in the _Guardian_, and who, from their
meritorious behaviour before and after the disaster that befel that ship,
received conditional emancipation by his Majesty's command. Morris was
at Norfolk Island when the intimation of the royal bounty reached this
country. Being permitted to return to this settlement, he obtained a
grant of thirty acres of land at the Eastern Farms, in an advantageous
situation on the northside of the creek leading to Parramatta. Here it
soon became evident that he had not the industry necessary for a _bona
fide_ settler, and that, instead of cultivating his own ground, he lent
himself to his neighbours, who were to repay his labour by working for
him at a future day. The governor deemed this a clear forfeiture of his
grant, in which it was unequivocally expressed, that he held the thirty
acres on condition of his residing within the same, and proceeding to the
improvement and cultivation thereof. Being no longer a settler, he
declared himself able to procure his daily support without the assistance
of the public stores, from which, it must be remarked, he had been
maintained all the time he held his grant. Soon after this, it was said,
he formed the plan of going off with a boat; yet not so cautiously, but
that information was given of it to the governor, who resolved to send
him back to Norfolk Island, whence an escape was by no means so
practicable as from this place; and he was, very much against his
inclination, put on board the _Atlantic_ for that purpose. He found
means, however, to get on shore in the night preceding her departure; and
she sailed without him. A reward being offered for apprehending him, he
was soon taken, and sent up to Parramatta, there to be confined on a
reduced ration, until an opportunity offered of sending him to Norfolk
island.

During the month the governor thought it necessary to issue some
regulations to be observed by those convicts whose sentences of
transportation h