nded to the
secretary of state to send all convicts to New South Wales, where wages
were high and labor scarce, until the colonies being equal, the market
of Van Diemen's Land might again share in absorbing them. To this plan
the colony would have been disposed to assent at this stage of the
struggle. By most persons it was thought reasonable, on national
grounds, that the theory of dispersion should be tried, wherever it
might inflict no peculiar caste or moral stain. Mr. Sharland, a
strenuous abolitionist, prepared a series of resolutions against the new
form of convictism. The governor promised to support them in the nominee
council, and they passed unanimously (October, 1848). The first totally
objected to the ticket system, as in the highest degree injurious to the
convicts and the colony, and without advantage to Great Britain. The
second recommended the dispersion of convicts throughout the colonies,
accompanied by well-selected emigrants. The commentary of the governor
explained these resolutions as a compromise between persons of adverse
views. A large number of non-official magistrates--117 out of
140--signed the condemnatory clause only. They declined to countenance
the revival of transportation, or, by discussing theories of secondary
punishment, to weaken the moral claim held in the pledge of Earl Grey.

The increasing numbers of ticket-holders confirmed these objections.
They were landed, and forwarded in considerable bodies to seek
employment in the interior. Their decent apparel and quiet demeanour
made them less objects of aversion than pity. Unacquainted with colonial
labor, they were often unable to procure employment. Amongst men of this
class many, of course, were disorderly and reckless, and when they were
not readily relieved, they were insolent and threatening. They could,
indeed, throw up their tickets, and claim food of the government, but
only by a process which exposed them to censure and punishment.
"Unfortunate men," said the London Agency Association, "unacquainted
with useful labor, wander from farm to farm, asking for a night's
shelter or a morsel of bread. The relief of these men by the settlers is
prompted alike by their humanity and their fears."[257] These statements
were disputed by the governor, but they were sustained by numerous
certificates, and, in a form more qualified, by several police
magistrates. In a lonely locality females could hardly refuse relief to
applicants in part