But this assisted emigration was carried out in a very half-hearted, incomplete fashion, so much so that for a long time--till years after the peace of 1815--says Heath in his "Paper on Secondary Punishments," "a large proportion of the free settlers are described as of a low character, not very superior to that of the convicts." Their numbers were very small, being recruited indeed from the three sources above mentioned--the soldiers, the sailors, and the convicts themselves. Naturally, as time passed and sentences lapsed, the last mentioned supplied a very numerous class. Every effort was made to give them a fair start on the new road they were expected to follow. They received grants of land, varying from ten to sixty acres, with additional slices for children or wife. Pigs, seed-corn, implements, rations and clothing were served out to each from the King's store; and, thus provided for, straightforward industry would soon have earned for them an honest competence. But in comparatively few instances did these convict settlers thrive. They formed a body of small proprietors of the worst class, ruining their land by bad farming, and making those who were still convicts far worse by the example they set of dissoluteness and dissipation. Society now, and for years to come, presented a curious spectacle. Its most conspicuous features were its drunkenness and its immorality. The whole community might be divided into those who sold spirits and those who drank them. Everything went in drink. The crops were no sooner gathered than they went for spirits. Any hope of raising the general tone of society was out of the question so long as this unbounded intemperance prevailed. Besides this, there was neither marrying nor giving in marriage. In Governor Bligh's time two-thirds of the births were illegitimate. Bands of robbers, the first bushrangers, infested the country, levying blackmail, and, entering the homes of the defenceless settlers in open day, committed the most fearful atrocities.