of conception overlooked or ignored, grew in course of time sufficiently powerful to upset the whole scheme as originally devised. Beyond question the task was not a light one. The Government did not shirk its duty, but it was fully alive to the difficulties that lay in the way. Speaking some years later, a member of that administration thus deprecates adverse criticism. "We could hardly hope," says Earl Grey, "to succeed at once in devising a system of secondary punishments effectual for its purpose and free from objections, thereby solving a problem which has for many years engaged the attention of legislators and statesmen of most civilised countries, and has hitherto proved most difficult for them all." But they met the question manfully, and this is what they devised. Transportation was to continue in force, but it was to be governed by certain checks and safeguards which had been altogether absent before, through all the long years that convicts had been sent out to the antipodes. And now the whole stream was to be directed on Van Diemen's Land alone. This Van Diemen's Land, which was thenceforth to be only a colonial prison, had been settled some years later than Botany Bay, by a party under Colonel Collins from the parent settlement. It had struggled for life amid the same vicissitudes of famine and privation as New South Wales, and similarly some years had elapsed before its home products were sufficient for its own support. Up to the year 1821 it was solely a penal settlement for the transportation of convicts from Sydney; but after that date a few free settlers planted themselves in it, and by-and-by ships landed their living cargoes at Hobart Town direct from England, just as they did at Sydney in New South Wales. The system of assignment was practised precisely as in the senior settlement, with this difference, that the discipline was more perfect, and the machine worked with greater ease. Two thirds of the whole number there were thus in assigned service, the balance being employed as in New South Wales in chain-gangs, at penal settlements, or on the roads. Colonel Arthur, who was for many years governor of the colony, and who was well known as a strenuous supporter of transportation, claimed, and with some show of right, that the management and treatment of convicts had been attended with a greater measure of success in Van Diemen's Land than elsewhere. This may have had some weight with the government; for the existence of a good system of administration was essential to the execution of the new project: but it is probable that Van Diemen's Land was chosen as the sole future receptacle of convicts because as yet it had had no thought of refusing to receive them. New South Wales had rebelled, but Van Diemen's Land was still obedient; and no time was lost in turning its willingness to good account.