Comparative freedom comes at the end of ten years, the convict gains his ticket-of-leave and is called in local language a “self-supporter.” He has done, more or less, with prison restraints; he lives in some small village in a house of his own and earns his living his own way; he farms; he keeps cattle; he moves about freely unguarded and unwatched; he sends home to the mainland for his wife and children; or, if single, he may marry a female convict in the same position as himself. His condition is to a certain extent enviable. If industrious, he may make and put by money, but still he is tied and bound by regulation; he has no civil rights, and is in the hands of a paternal authority which prescribes his place of residence and will suffer him to move to and fro within his village, if well conducted, but he cannot leave the settlement and he must not be idle under pain of the loss of privileges and relegation to enforced labour. Existence nevertheless is tolerable, and in this way he completes ten or fifteen years more until at length the time for absolute release arrives. In the earlier period of this last stage he has received assistance in the shape of free gifts of food and tools and a roof to cover him, but his self-reliance is stimulated by the obligation in later years to fend for himself and accept all the public burdens of the community. He must pay rent and taxes and all charges exacted from the free population. All the disabilities are equally imposed upon female convicts with permission to marry or enter domestic service after five years of conditional liberation.