In the early part of this century Australia had three classes of inhabitants—free settlers, convicts, and emancipists—the latter being convicts who had served out their sentences and become free men. The free settlers refused to associate with them, and they in turn would not associate with the convicts; the free settlers were inclined to be tyrannical, and wished to have the emancipists deprived of civil rights, and long and bitter quarrels were the result of their demands. The governors generally took the side of the emancipists as a matter of justice, and thus made themselves unpopular with the rest of the colony.
While studying the early history of the Australian colonies, Frank and Fred obtained considerable information from a gentleman who seemed to be thoroughly familiar with the subject. As he made no allusion in any way to his ancestry, the youths thought it just possible that he might be the son or grandson of one of the "involuntary emigrants" of early days. Desiring to respect his reserve as much as possible, they did not make any entry of his name in their note-books. Their suspicions were strengthened by a remark which he dropped, that it was not considered polite in Australian society to ask who and what a man's father was.
"The term 'convict' is of course odious," said he, "no matter what the circumstance that has caused it to be applied to a man. Many of the convicts who were sent to Australia owed their transportation to no worse offences than sympathizing with a rebellion, snaring a hare, or catching a fish out of somebody's preserved pond. I knew a man who was transported for seven years for nothing else than twisting the neck of a partridge, and his case was very far from being a solitary one. In the eye of the British law he was a criminal, a convict; but in the eye of common-sense and humanity his respectability was not greatly tarnished. The Irish rebellion of 1798 caused great numbers of Irishmen to be transported; they were treated as criminals, and all sorts of indignities were heaped upon them, but their only crime was that of seeking to free their country."
Frank asked how the convicts were treated on the voyage from England to Australia and after they arrived there.
"According to all accounts," was the reply, "they were very cruelly used. On the transport-ships they were closely herded together, poorly fed, and severely flogged for the least infraction of the rules. Many died on the voyage in consequence of the inhuman treatment they received; in some cases the deaths were a fourth of the entire number. On their arrival in Australia they were put at work in Government establishments, or on public roads and wharves, or were hired out to agricultural and other colonists. You must remember that those were the days of brute force, and no officer in charge of convicts ever thought of such a thing as moral suasion and kindness, however much combined with firmness. Flogging was of daily and almost hourly occurrence, and administered for trivial offences; a historian of the colony says that any man who failed to go to church on Sundays received twenty lashes on his bare back. Prisoners were put in irons often at the mere caprice of their keepers, their food was scanty, their clothing often insufficient for the weather, and if a man ventured to run away he was pursued by blood-hounds and bull-dogs and brought back, unless killed by the natives or dead from starvation.
THE TOWN HALL, SYDNEY.
"Settlements were formed at several places along the coast of Australia and in Van Dieman's Land (now Tasmania). The first convict settlement in Tasmania was on a peninsula, and a row of bull-dogs was chained across the narrow isthmus that connected the peninsula with the main-land, so close together that it was impossible for a man to pass between any two of them."
"I suppose the prisoners rarely managed to escape?" said Frank.