trange stories were
afloat concerning the persecution of women who dared to choose their own
lovers. To put down this profligacy was the first care of Arthur; and in
enforcing a severe attention to etiquette and outward respectability, he
perhaps erred on the side of virtue. Honest, brave, and high-minded,
he was also penurious and cold, and the ostentatious good humour of
the colonists dashed itself in vain against his polite indifference. In
opposition to this official society created by Governor Arthur was that
of the free settlers and the ticket-of-leave men. The latter were more
numerous than one would be apt to suppose. On the 2nd November, 1829,
thirty-eight free pardons and fifty-six conditional pardons appeared on
the books; and the number of persons holding tickets-of-leave, on the
26th of September the same year, was seven hundred and forty-five.

Of the social condition of these people at this time it is impossible to
speak without astonishment. According to the recorded testimony of many
respectable persons-Government officials, military officers, and free
settlers-the profligacy of the settlers was notorious. Drunkenness was
a prevailing vice. Even children were to be seen in the streets
intoxicated. On Sundays, men and women might be observed standing round
the public-house doors, waiting for the expiration of the hours of
public worship, in order to continue their carousing. As for the
condition of the prisoner population, that, indeed, is indescribable.
Notwithstanding the severe punishment for sly grog-selling, it was
carried on to a large extent. Men and women were found intoxicated
together, and a bottle of brandy was considered to be cheaply bought at
the price of twenty lashes. In the factory--a prison for females--the
vilest abuses were committed, while the infamies current, as matters
of course, in chain gangs and penal settlements, were of too horrible
a nature to be more than hinted at here. All that the vilest and most
bestial of human creatures could invent and practise, was in this
unhappy country invented and practised without restraint and without
shame.

Seven classes of criminals were established in 1826, when the new
barracks for prisoners at Hobart Town were finished. The first class
were allowed to sleep out of barracks, and to work for themselves on
Saturday; the second had only the last-named indulgence; the third were
only allowed Saturday afternoon; the fourth and fifth were "ref