597 man. But Jaccho dam rogue now! All dam rogue in Sydney. Bimeby, Massa Judge be dam rogue tool" The female convicts were for the most part quite as egregiously mismanaged as the males. From the hour of their embarkation in England they were under a merely nomi nal restraint. The herd of women conveyed on the transport—ranging from poor little servant-maids, vagrants, cutpurses, and com mon trulls, up to the Aspasias who had queened it in West-end supper-rooms, and who stepped on board in their furs—had full liberty of intercourse during the eight months' voyage. Xo prison matrons were over them, no warders of their own sex; they were disciplined solely by the ship's surgeon. The surgeon appointed whom he pleased as nurses to the sick, and, if he were gallantly inclined, he might admit to the indulgences of the hospital, for the whole of the voyage, all the prettiest and most interesting of his passengers. It was no part of Aspasia's pen ance to shiver on deck in a prison calico. Room was found in the hold for her trunks, which were usually stuffed with apparel in the best fashion: and she spent the last week of the trip to Port Jackson in selecting the most becoming wear for her debut. The town turned out to witness the arrival of the "ladies' boat," and the ladies received offers of marriage, and other proposals, on their way from the transport to the Factory. The Factory was an agreeable retreat at Parramatta for the frail recluses of Botany Bay. Three classes of women were admitted there: (i) Those who had not been assigned as servants on their arrival in the colony; (2) those whose masters had returned them upon the hands of the Government; and (3) those vho, having completed their sentences, were awaiting there some fresh development of fortune. At the period undT discussion, the Factory was administered by a Mrs. Gor don, whose "two dashing daughters were said to be "not the most perfect examples of virtue to the numerous females under her charge." The position of a plain settler, who, want ing a nurse maid or a cook, received un awares into his household an erstwhile cele
brated ornament of the Yauxhall Gardens, was in no way enviable. The story is still extant of an unsophisticated colonial farmer who hired in the capacity of housekeeper a dulcinea of this quality. She drove up to the station with a cartload of luggage, "perfumed with botanical creams," and declined to be interviewed by her master until she had put on silk stockings. But the shrewdest of the female convicts preferred the Factory to service of any kind among the settlers; for "Mrs. Gordon's lambs." as they were called, were fairly well cared for, they were never put to work, and they had the chances of fortune. The Fac tory seems to have been at once a rather luxurious asylum, a show place, and a matri monial agency. It may have been other things besides. It was certainly not in all respects the most reputable institution in the colony. Children born within the walls were baptised in the name of the governor of the day! Mrs. Gordon, one may conjecture, re tired on a fortune. Almo.=t the whole legal system of the col ony was wretchedly inefficient, and hope lessly immoral. The smartest persons con nected with it were convicts and ex-convicts. Among the law officers of the Crown sent out from England there was hardly one com petent man. An Attorney-General under Darling's administration was scarcely ever sober, and left his business to be done by his convict clerk, who was always open to a bribe when drawing an indictment. Criminals with long purses, whom Mr. Attorney-Gen eral B was called upon to prosecute, had rarely anything to fear. When legal abuses were at their height in the colony, the whole squad of barristers and attorneys acted both as solicitors and as counsel, and the most frivolous actions were got up in the inter ests of business." Imported legal rogues abounded, and, as these were usually as signed to second-rate lawyers in the colony, the general standard of morality in the Pro fession may be readily imagined. What was euphemiously known as the "emancipist con nection" was a highly profitable one to the
