In the official newspaper of 1827, it is stated that 1,000 applications were registered at Hobart Town. To an English reader, and to a modern colonist, the notices of this period seem like satire. "Better," remarks this organ of the higher classes, "better send petitions for more prisoners--now that applications have lain dormant for twelve months: some for four, eight, and ten men--than trouble about trial by jury and representative government. The disappointment, we trust, will be temporary: when the last vessel sailed, the _York_ was freighting. We trust the home secretary will consider the deficiency"! The extremely earnest manner in which these felonious additions were implored, is a curious relic of a bygone era.[159] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 156: _Collins_, vol. i. p. 267.] [Footnote 157: _Gazette_, 11th July, 1822.] [Footnote 158: Bischcoff.] SECTION XI. The system of assignment was first established in America (1718), and continued for fifty-six years: the rigid discipline permitted by the colonial law, the kind of labor usually performed by the servants, and their diffusion over an extensive surface, tended alike to restrain, to reform, and ultimately to merge them undistinguished. Many, endowed with good natural abilities, such as an accomplished thief usually possesses, succeeded in their pursuits, and became masters themselves, _by the purchase_ of the servitude of those afterwards sent out for sale.[160] Thus, whatever complaints were raised against transportation itself, none objected to assignment; and the long period of its duration, proves that the home government cared little for the state of prisoners, while there was no local press to vindicate their _rights_, and few readers of books to encourage romantic delineations of their _felicity_.