conduct, despite the inconceivable difficulty besetting such an attempt on the part of a convict in Western Australia. His own class is continually robbing him or throwing temptations in his way; false swearing out of spite goes on to a frightful extent, and the man who wishes to live in peace and keep out of mischief can do so only by avoiding, as much as possible, all communication with his neighbours.
It may easily be imagined that, as so large a part of human sorrow springs from crime, there can be no place where misery, of one kind or other, comes oftener before the eyes than in a penal settlement; in fact we used to feel that, until we lived in one, we had never seen thorough wretchedness. But it was too unlike a "locus penitentiae" for a parallel with Dante's purgatory, even though the scene of the last-named place, by a strange coincidence, is laid in the southern hemisphere.
It was also a fruitful source of discontent that in case the employer of a ticket-of-leave holder brought a charge against him resulting in imprisonment, he might be, and sometimes was, mulcted of all wages that were due to him before committing the offence, besides being sent to jail—a state of law which offered a temptation to such masters as were needy and unprincipled to pick a quarrel with a convict servant, (when the work was completed which he had been hired to do,) in order to escape the payment of the wages due by accusing him of damaging property or neglecting his duties.
The crowning grievance, however, was the system, which universally prevailed in the colony, of paying wages by truck, every up-country settler keeping a shop or store
