into the colonial market, and potatos sold at twenty
shillings which cost the government L10 per ton. Several hundred men
idled their time in cultivating land which did not equal in the
aggregate a single farm.[240] The estimated value of all the articles
produced on two stations, Deloraine and Westbury, in 1846, by four
hundred men, was less than L2 per man; while the salaries of their
officers were nearly double that sum.[241]

Mr. Montagu, the late colonial secretary, in estimating the cost of the
convict department, presented a calculation L100,000 annually less than
the estimate of the officers on the spot. This difference Lord Stanley
set up as proof of the culpable negligence and profligacy of colonial
expense. He considered the body of persons employed in the control of
prisoners excessive. A reduction was therefore enforced, and in the end
less surveillance was employed than free labor usually requires.

To each party of three hundred seven overseers were attached, without
constables or other restraint. The sub-division of these parties in
labor left them often to the practical oversight of a single person, and
he an expiree. Thus they were able to make excursions for the purposes
of robbery and pleasure: their clothing tended rather to disguise than
distinguish them. As the terms of their service expired they were
discharged in the prison dress, and no one could tell whether they were
or not illegally at large. Escaped prisoners have been known to walk
through bodies of men on the road without challenge. In several
instances robberies were committed on travellers within the precincts of
the stations. The enclosures were often merely the common garden fence.
The judges avowed that in passing sentence for crimes they could not
punish them with severity, considering the strong temptations of the
men. Remembering the number virtually and legally at large, the degree
of safety, or rather the instances of exemption from pillage, must be
considered almost miraculous. A great portion of minor crimes were not
prosecuted, and a still larger number were undetected; but eight hundred
recorded crimes--a scourge to ten thousand families, and full of terror
and danger to all--would not seem extravagant when divided among thirty
thousand prisoners.

The despatches of Wilmot to Lord Stanley described with accurate
minuteness the social effects of the probation system. Those who
remember his apparent apathy when those evils w