In the latter part of the preceding chapter I have dealt with convicts in assignment. These of course did not comprise the whole number in the colony. Putting on one side the ticket-of-leave men,--who were still really convicts, though for the moment and during good behaviour masters of themselves,--and not including emancipists, who though, to all intents and purposes, men free as air, still carried a class-brand which generations only could efface--there were, in addition to the servants assigned to private individuals, a large body of convicts retained in the hands of the government of the colony. A certain proportion of these were men so chosen on arrival for satisfying certain demands, and therefore kept back from ordinary assignment because the government officials, so to speak, assigned them to themselves. There were public works to be carried out, and the government was clearly as much entitled to share in the supply of convict labour as the settler. It was said that the condition of these convicts in government employ was always worse than those in private hands. About one fourth of the whole available number were thus appropriated for the colonial works. But over and above these, the government held the entire number of refuse convicts in the colonies. Every man who did not get on with his master; every man who committed himself, and was sentenced to undergo any correction greater than flogging or less than capital punishment, came back to government, and was by it disposed of in one of three ways: First, the road parties; second, the chain-gangs; and third, the penal settlements.