tion of convicts on the population of West Australia will appear from the following estimates:—To the year 1868, 9680 had been landed. In 1875 the number of expirees and men holding conditional pardons was about 4478, of ticket-of-leave holders 350, in confinement 280, with 4 invalids. The total convict element in addition to the free immigrant population must be therefore above 6000, but the number of their descendants cannot he estimated.
Besides these, between the years 1850 and 1858, 1780 military pensioners, some with wives and families, and 2,888 free emigrants were sent out at the expense of the Imperial Government, and from 1858 to 1876 2243, making a total of 7086, or some 2500 less adults than the number of convicts. It had been part of the agreement that the numbers should be equal, but differences arose as to expenses incurred after landing in the Colony, and at times labor was not in demand.
The effect of the introduction of convicts on the finances of the Colony may be estimated from the following figures:—The expenditure on account of the Colony by the Imperial Government from 1832 to 1850, was £355,772 13s. 3d., from 1850 to 1870, £1,932,850 9s. 2d.
The results of convict labor are apparent in the Government House, Town Hall, and Prison at Perth, the Prison and Lighthouse at Fremantle, as well as in other buildings in those places and throughout the Colony. Mr. Knight, in the Census Papers of 1870, estimates a total length of 1100 miles of road, and that, out of 16,294 feet in length of bridges, 9589, including all the most important and most expensive, with 79 small bridges of a single span, and an innumerable number of culverts, to have been made by their labor.
