averred that a military officer had done West Australia a great wrong in representing to the Home Government that five companies of the line formed a larger body of men than were required there; and another set of advisers were incessantly desiring to recommend the virtues of the climate to the notice of physicians, in order that the colony should be resorted to as a gigantic Sanitarium by invalid soldiers from India.
However unlikely it may be that the Home Government regarded the settlers' request for convicts in the light of disinterested benevolence, there can be no doubt that it was made at an extremely convenient moment for English legislators, and that, so far, Western Australia deserves well at their hands. The Cape colonists had just declared that convicts "must not, could not, and should not" be landed in South Africa, and the willingness of the people in Swan River to accept them relieved the Government from a present dilemma, and perhaps staved off for some time longer the question of compulsory education. At all events it appears to have been judged impolitic to let the applicants find out too soon the nature of the boon which they had demanded, for the best-disposed prisoners in the English jails were selected to make up the first shiploads sent to the colony.
As time passed on a much worse class of criminals composed the cargoes, so that to have "come out" in one of the first ships was a point on which a man might deservedly pride himself. Comparisons were indeed so much in favour of the first comers, that even the long term of transportation to which all of them had been condemned was regarded as no disparagement by the settlers, whilst
