There was another very improper proceeding which for a long time held among the convicts of this superior or more wealthy class. Their wives followed them out to the antipodes, bringing with them often the bulk of their ill-gotten gains. Having thus ample funds, they established themselves well on arrival, and applied for a grant of convicts like the rest of their neighbours. Naturally they took care to secure that their own husbands should be among the number. There was one man who had received a very heavy sentence for the robbery of a custom house, who should have gone direct to Norfolk Island. Through some bribery he was landed at Sydney, and was made overseer at once of a gang working in the street. Within a day or two he absconded. His wife had joined him with the proceeds of the robbery, and they went off together. Mr. Macarthur gives another case of a farrier who was assigned to him. This convict's wife followed him, and asked permission to live with him on Mr. Macarthur's farm. When this was refused the man managed to get returned to Sydney, and was there reassigned to his wife. To something of this kind some of the largest shops in Sydney owed their origin. Among the many lighter and more remunerative kinds of employment into which the convict of the special class readily fell, was employment on the public press. As time passed there had grown up a strong antagonism between bond and free, and both sides had their newspapers. The organs which were emancipist in tone were not of the highest class, but they were often conducted with considerable ability. Their staff was of course recruited from the convict ships as they arrived, where compositors, leader writers, and even sub-editors were occasionally to be found. The most notorious instance of this description, was the case of W., who was originally assigned as a servant to the proprietor of the _Sydney Gazette_. This paper, which was then published only three times a week, was an able and influential journal, and its editor and owner was a certain O'S., who had himself been assigned to a former proprietor, and by him employed as a reporter. To him came W., and these two, according to Dr. Laing, bent all their energies to compass "the abolition of all the moral distinctions that the law of God has established in society; to persuade the public that the free emigrant was no better than the convict, that the whole community was equally corrupt, and those of the convict class were no worse than the best in the colony, their situation being the result of misfortune, as they pretended, and not of misconduct."