Should this mutual understanding fail to be established very early in the voyage, there is likely to be continual bickering between them, and endless thwarting on every trifling occasion, until at length an open rupture takes place, and the Master takes his revenge by dispensing with the Surgeon’s future services as soon as the convicts have been disembarked, and leaves him on shore to find a passage home in the best manner he can. It is fair, however, to state, that the Navy Board so far makes the Surgeon independent of such an unpleasant casualty, as to allow him fifty pounds by way of passage money returning from the colony: but whether this liberality be an equivalent for the severe discharge of an ungracious duty, by which he is subject to that emergency, is more than questionable, as it is a well known fact, that the sum demanded for a passage from New South Wales to England is from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds. To remain at the colony is productive of manifold inconvenience, as the allowance of fifty pounds will soon be expended for the necessaries of living, while the same demand and difficulty to return will still continue. This representation, although a bare recital of facts, may be objected to as being the very worst state of the case supposed, and that the argument rests upon a contingency which has but seldom occurred: but this objection, far from weakening the position, gives an additional weight to the statement, and claims for it a greater degree of attention. For it can be said without fear of refutation, that nineteen out of twenty of the Surgeons who go out in convict ships would return involved in debts, which it would be utterly beyond their power to discharge by any other means than an apprenticeship in the King’s Bench, were they to rely solely on the fifty pounds to meet the expenses of the passage home, which it may be seen requires four times that sum. It should be considered, moreover, that convict ships return very rarely from New South Wales directly, as they are mostly chartered to distant ports in India, or are directed by their owners to proceed in quest of cargo, after their engagement with Government is completed. In this case, a considerable time usually elapses in preparing for this fresh destination before the vessel can leave Sydney; and should the Surgeon be entered as a passenger, he must abide by the regulations existing on those occasions, by which he is bound to maintain himself on shore as long as the ship remains in any port. The heavy expenses which this must create, in addition to that of passage, must be seriously felt by the time the vessel will have arrived in England. Either, then, the Surgeon must subdue his honourable feelings by silencing scruples as to the duties of Superintendent, or he must abide by such consequences as leave him the inmate of a prison.