Of the extraordinary prevalence of crime there could be little doubt. One eminent judge spoke of the colony as composed of two classes; one whose main business was the commission of crime and the other, the punishment of it. The whole colony, he said, seemed to be in motion towards the courts of justice. Beyond question the criminal statistics were rather startling. The number of convictions for highway robbery in New South Wales alone was equal to the whole number of convictions for all offences in England. Murders and criminal assaults were as common out there as petty larcenies at home. The ratio was one offender to every twenty-two of population; while in England about the same period it varied from one in seven hundred and forty to one in a thousand. It is but fair, however, to state that nearly the whole mass of crime proceeded from the convicts, or those who had been such. Among the reputable portion of the population the proportion was no greater in New South Wales than elsewhere. Sydney was a perfect den of thieves; and these, being indeed selected from the whole felonry of England, were quite masters of their business, and stood at the head of the profession. The report of the police magistrate of Sydney, printed in October, 1835, gives an awful picture of the state of the town. Of the whole population of twenty thousand a large proportion were prisoners, past or present, "whose passions are violent, and who have not been accustomed to control them, yet for the most part have no lawful means of gratifying them. It includes a great number of incorrigible characters, who, on obtaining their freedom, will not apply themselves to any honest mode of earning their living, but endeavour to support themselves in idleness and debauchery by plunder." "There is more immorality in Sydney," he continues, "than in any other English town of the same population in His Majesty's dominions." It contained two hundred and nineteen public-houses, and there were besides sly grog-shops innumerable. "There is no town which affords so much facility for eluding the vigilance of the police. The unoccupied bush near and within the town itself will afford shelter to the offender and hide him from pursuit; he may steal or hire a boat, and in a few minutes place an arm of the sea between him and his pursuers.... The drunkenness, idleness, and carelessness of a great portion of the inhabitants afford innumerable opportunities and temptations day and night to live by plunder." Sir Francis Forbes, the Chief Justice of the colony, endorses the foregoing statements. "That this is a true description," he says, "of the actual state of Sydney cannot be denied."