The Government Order expressed a desire for the magistrates to get the force organized in parties of ten, with a leader and guide. The military commanders were to be accompanied by some of the roving parties that had been out after the Blacks, and who were, therefore, judged valuable auxiliaries to the movement. The Ticket-of-Leave men, as occupying the first social step toward freedom, were to be treated with more distinction than the ordinary convicts, who would be in the field as assigned servants of patriotic settlers; magistrates were to give each prisoner a written pass with his division described, and exercise discretion about entrusting some with fire-arms. Fires were to be kept burning on certain hills, as marks to steer by.
Mr. Surveyor-General Frankland has the credit of forming the general outline of the scheme, though ably assisted by Major Shaw.
The change of policy astonished many, while approved of by most. The idea of the Line was a source of merriment with those who were the political enemies of Government. One of the heroes of the times, whom I knew in Melbourne afterwards, explained the scheme thus: "Look here—it was just like this. Suppose I said I would catch all the fish coming down the Yarra, and put a little net in the middle, leaving all the rest of the stream open, I guess I wouldn't catch many." Mr. Gregson ridiculed the whole affair, as like climbing up Mount Wellington, 4,000 feet high, for an easy way to get whales by harpooning from its summit. The Launceston Advertiser was delighted to have an opportunity of attacking the authorities by a hit at the editor of the semi-official paper, the Hobart Town Courier, that had just then, by arrangement, announced the plan that should be adopted, and which was gazetted a day or two only after.
"While we give," says the Advertiser of September 27th, "to the kind-hearted, and worthy, but invisible editor of the Courier every credit for his advice of a Cordon to catch the Blacks, and then to place them on Tasman's Peninsula, we must just say that it is one of those visionary schemes to be wished for, but not practicable. It no doubt reads very prettily thus: 'Let a cordon be drawn across the island early in the morning, and before night drive all the Blacks in that division up in one corner; and mind, men, do not shoot or hurt one, but catch them
