But beyond question, many of the emancipists throve. The pictures drawn of their wealth and prosperity may be a little exaggerated, but in their main outlines they were undoubtedly true. There was one who made a fortune of £45,000 in a year. Several others had incomes of £20,000. One or two of the largest shops in Sydney were owned by them. They had public-houses, and farms, and ships, and newspapers, and all the outward signs of material wealth. They spared no pains or cost to get gorgeous furniture and costly plate. They had grand carriages and good horses, and were fond of lavish and ostentatious expenditure. But with all this, low tastes prevailed. No one bought pictures or works of art: the only literature they valued was the "Newgate Calendar," and they preferred a prize-fight any day to an opera or a decent play. It was said, indeed, that the principal wealth of the colony was for a long time held in the hands of those emancipists. Honest people less successful in the race for money declared that these others made fortunes because they were quite unscrupulous. No doubt the accusation held. One case was proved in which a certain shop undersold all others, simply because its owner, an ex-convict, was a receiver of stolen goods, which he naturally was able to retail at remarkably cheap rates. A number made their fortunes by dealing only with their fellow-convicts, whom a sort of freemasonry attracted always to convict shops. The practice, at one time prevalent, and to which I have already referred, of giving small grants of land to ticket-of-leave men, was another opening to convict shopkeepers and general dealers. These farmers came into Sydney to sell their produce. As there were no markets, certain individuals bought all that came, paying for the same in "property,"--in drink, that is to say, and other articles of consumption. The countrymen got drunk always, and stayed a day or two on the same spot: at last the landlord would ask if they knew how much they owed, and name the amount as £50. When they expressed surprise, he would tell them they had been too drunk to know what they were doing. Of course the victim was unable to pay, and had to sign a power of attorney, or paper binding himself to give up all his produce until the debt was cancelled. This fraud was repeated again and again, till all the man's property was pledged. Then he was sold up. One man had been known to drink away his farm of 100 acres in a single night. It was by carrying on this line of action that the emancipist already mentioned as worth £20,000 a year became a large landed proprietor. But he was also a thrifty, careful man, from the time he had come out when almost a boy with one of the first fleets. He was a sober man, moreover; and when spirits were issued to the convicts employed in building at Parramatta, he saved his and sold it to his fellows. Then, putting by all the time he was a prisoner every shilling he could make, he was able