“On arriving in New South Wales, I was placed in a gang with other convicts; and put to the business of pushing a wheel-barrow. We were employed in removing a hill, from the place where nature had set it: for no other reason, I believe, than for the purpose of keeping us from being idle! The labour was not severe; but the life was a very weary one. It was not the work that made it so to me. I was used to work, and did not dislike it, if there had been any sense in the task we had to perform. But I had no more idea of what my labour was for, than the wheel-barrow with which I performed it; and therefore I could feel no more interest in the work, than did the barrow itself.
“My toil was not sweetened with the reflection that it was in behalf of those I loved. On the contrary, I knew that the best years of my life were being uselessly squandered, while my mother and her children were perhaps suffering for food!
“I often asked myself the question: why I had been sent from home? It could not have been to reform me, and make me lead a better life, after the expiration of the term for which I had been sentenced. It could not have been for that: for no youth could have been more innocent of all evil intentions than I was, up to the time of my unfortunate affair with the policeman. All the philosophers of earth could not devise a scheme better adapted to corrupt the morals of a young man—make him forget all the good he had ever learnt—harden his soul against all the better feelings of human nature—and transform him from a weak frail mortal, with good intentions, into a very demon—than the transportation system of England.
“From the age of twenty years, until that of thirty, I consider the most valuable part of a man’s existence; and as this whole period was taken from me, I naturally regarded the future of my life, as scarce worth possessing. I became recklessly indifferent as to what my actions might be; and from that time they were wholly guided by the circumstances of the hour.
“Each month, I either heard, or saw, something calculated to conduct me still further along the path of crime. I do not say that all my companions were bad men; but most of them were: since my daily associates were thieves, and men guilty of crimes even worse than theft I am willing to acknowledge—which is more than some of them would do—that the fact of their being convicts was strong evidence of their being wicked men.
“After having spent nearly a year, between the trams of the wheel-barrow in the neighbourhood of Sydney, I was despatched with a gang to do some labourer’s work up the country.
“Most of the men in this gang, were wickeder than those, with whom I had previously been associated. This was perhaps owing to the fact that my new companions had been longer abroad, and were of course better trained to the transportation system.
“Some of them were suffering great agony through the want of tobacco and strong drink, in both of which—being many of them ‘ticket-of-leave’ holders—they had lately had a chance of freely indulging. That you may know something of the character of these men, and of the craving they had for tobacco, I shall tell you what I saw some of them do.
“Many of the wardens—as is usually the case—were greatly disliked by the convicts; and the latter, of course, took every opportunity of showing their hatred towards them.
“One morning, the gang refused to go to work—owing to a part of the usual allowance of food having been stopped from one of them, as they said, for no good reason. The overseer, in place of sending for the superintendent, attempted to force them to their tasks; and the result was a ‘row.’