The convicts were then employed in
clearing the ground on which the officers were encamped, and this they
refused; they did not suppose they were sent out to do more than
garrison duty, and these gentlemen (that is, the majority of the
officers) think the being obliged to sit as members of the Criminal
Court an hardship, and for which they are not paid, and likely think
themselves hardly dealt by, in that Government had not determined what
lands were to be given to them. But I presume an additional force will
be sent out when the necessity of making detachments in order to
cultivate lands in the more open country is known, and from four to six
hundred men, will, I think, be absolutely necessary.
If fifty farmers were sent out with their families they would do more in
one year in rendering this colony independent of the mother country _as
to provisions_ than a thousand convicts. There is some clear land which
is intended to be cultivated, at some distance from the camp, and I
intended to send out convicts for that purpose, under the direction of a
person that was going to India in the _Charlotte_, transport, but who
remained to settle in this country, and has been brought up a farmer,
but several of the convicts (three) have been lately killed by the
natives, and I have been obliged to defer it until a detachment can be
made.
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