songs even, express
sentiments of dishonesty, can easily lead the unwary and still
susceptible of the unfortunate class, into snares from which they cannot
afterwards escape if they would. Once made parties to an offence against
the law, they are bound as by a spell, to the order of flash-boys, with
whom it is held to be base and cowardly to act "upon the square," or
HONESTLY in any sense of the word; their order professing to act ever
"upon the cross." These men were so well-known to the better disposed and
more numerous portion of the party, that the night-guards had to be so
arranged, as that the stores or the camp should never be entirely in
their hands. Thus a watch was required to be set as regularly over the
stores, when the party was close to Sydney, as when it was surrounded by
savage tribes in the interior.

Between the "flash men" and the other men of the party, there was a wide
difference: An old man to whom they once offered some stolen flour,
refused it, saying, "I have been led into enough of trouble in my younger
days, by flash friends, and now I wish to lead a quiet life." Convicts,
in fact, consist of two distinctly different classes: the one,
fortunately by far the most numerous, comprising those whose crime was
the result of impulse; the other class consisting of those whose
principle of action is dishonesty; whose trade is crime, and of whose
reformation, there is much less hope. The offenders of the one class,
repented of their crime from the moment of conviction; those of the
other, know no such word in their vocabulary. The one, is still "a thing
of hope and change;" and would eagerly avail himself of every means
afforded him to regain the position he had lost; the other, true to his
"order," will "die game." For the separation of the wheat from the chaff,
a process by no means difficult, the colony of New South Wales was
formerly well adapted. The ticket of leave granted to the deserving
convict was one of the most perfect of reformatory indulgences; each
individual being known to the authorities, and liable, on the least
misconduct, to be sent to work on the public roads. The colony of New
South Wales has been the means of restoring many of our unfortunate
countrymen to positions in which they have shown that loyalty, industry,
public spirit, and patriotism, are not always to be extinguished in the
breasts of Englishmen, even by fetters and degradation. It is to be
regretted that a more vigila