“I shall now endeavour to describe their prospects of employment when liberated on a ticket-of-leave, from what came under my own observation. “A few men who were sent out in the _Palmerston_, having completed a large portion of their sentence at home (two of them with commuted sentence), were discharged from the establishment in about eight days after their arrival. They were supplied with a ticket-of-leave dress, a portion of their gratuity, and a pass for twenty-four hours, to enable them to seek employment. I travelled in the steamboat from Fremantle to Perth on the day some of them left the prison.... “The social status of the sober and industrious convict settler is perfectly assured. In the country districts no difference is made between him and the free settler. “I am, gentlemen,” &c. &c. After reading only this brief, sober, and most authentic report, the reader will begin to doubt whether transportation can be what it was once supposed to be—a very terrible penalty, severance of natural ties, death to family associations, and so forth. It has had its terrors, and at more than one season, but the season has always been limited. In July, 1827, came into operation an Act extending transportation to various felonious offences. In the following year there was a great decline in such offences—the new Act had stricken terror; but in the very next year the influence of the punishment had declined; by degrees transportation ceased to be regarded with alarm, and now it is admitted to be a positive reward. Writing years back, Archbishop Whately shows the dawn of this feeling. He quotes the words of convicts, crying out with delight at the accommodation on board ship; thanking God for having been carried to a country where they were well off; writing home with presents to masters whom they had robbed, and even offering patronage and assistance in a country where a man is sure to make his fortune. The keen-sighted teacher of logic foresaw that such dangerous knowledge must spread in the mother-country.