It is incumbent on me to advert to the ill-success of one method of supplying labour to the Australian colonies, which I have represented in much too favourable a light in my tale of “Homes Abroad.” I find that, though I have pointed out (pp. 54, 55) the leading objections to the plan of indenturing servants to colonial settlers, I have represented the issue of such an experiment as more prosperous than it has been proved in fact. The true state of the case will be learned from the following extract from “Papers relating to the Crown Lands and Emigration to New South Wales,” printed by order of the House of Commons, October, 1831. "The Emigrant, in the cases to which we allude, has bound himself, previously to his departure from this country, to serve his employer for a time at wages which, though higher than those which he could have obtained at home, were much below the ordinary rate in the colony. No attempt has been made to render the advantage obtained by the employer in this manner an equivalent for the expense he has incurred in carrying out the Emigrants; and it can scarcely be doubted that in many instances the bargain, if strictly adhered to, would have been more than reasonably profitable to the employer. Indeed it has been the principal fault of these arrangements that the engagement of the Emigrant has not been on either side regarded as a mere undertaking to repay the expense incurred in his conveyance; and hence he has often been led to look upon the transaction as a disadvantageous hiring of himself, into which he had been misled by his ignorance of the circumstances of the place to which he was going. This has been the frequent cause of discontent on the part of indentured servants; and their masters, unable to derive any advantage from unwilling labourers, have found it more for their interest to discharge these servants than to insist on the right conveyed by their bond. It is obvious that no increased severity in the legal enactments for the protection of contracts could prevent those which we have described from being thus dissolved; for they have been so, not from any insufficiency in the obligations by which the Emigrants have been bound, but from the impossibility of rendering such obligations worth preserving, where one of the parties strongly desires them to be cancelled."—pp. 21, 22.