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eral of Fremantle:--'The issue, under his Excellency's sanction, of a small allowance of tobacco, has been appreciated as a very great boon, and has prevented many irregularities. It also furnishes an excellent means of punishment for minor offences--that is, by its stoppage.' We can well believe this. We know positively that prisoners will undergo any risk to get even a morsel of tobacco, and would gladly sacrifice a day's food for it. It is almost incredible what an intense longing for tobacco arises in the minds of those forcibly restrained from the indulgence. Several 'tickets-of-leave' had already been granted at Fremantle; and on this subject we are presented with a mass of remarkable and instructive information. The reader is probably aware, that convicts in prison, before quitting England, are subjected to a term of hard labour--proportionate in duration to the length of their sentences of transportation--and to a further term of hard labour on arriving in Australia. When the latter term has expired, if the prisoner has conducted himself well, he is presented with a ticket-of-leave, which confines him to a certain district, where he may engage to labour for his own benefit under an employer. He does this, however, under very strict rules, and the least transgression is punished severely. If, for instance, he leaves the district, he is liable to be apprehended, and summarily convicted by a magistrate, who may sentence him to labour in irons; or he may forfeit his ticket-of-leave, and relapse into his former situation as a convict. Or if he at all misconducts himself, or is insubordinate, his employer may carry him before a magistrate, and have him corporally punished. A list is given of the convicts who obtained tickets-of-leave at Fremantle, with their trades, and the names of their employers, and the wages they were to receive. A groom received L.12 per annum; a carpenter, L.14; a labourer, L.1 per month; a blacksmith, L.1, 8s. per month; a mason, L.1, 10s. per month; and a brickmaker, L.2, 10s. per month. Each ticket-holder must pay to the comptroller-general the sum of L.15, for the expenses of his passage out to the colony. No ticket-holder, unless under very special circumstances, gets a 'conditional pardon' till one-half of his sentence, from date of conviction, is expired; nor will he receive a conditional pardon till the whole of the L.15 is paid. 'Wives and families of well-conducted ticket-of-leave me
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