But, whatever the amount of difficulties attendant on
the foundations of colonies, those difficulties were greatly augmented,
in New South Wales, by the character of the first settlers. The
offenders who were transported in the past century to America, were sent
to communities the bulk of whose population were men of thrift and
probity; the children of improvidence were dropped in by driblets
amongst the mass of a population already formed, and were absorbed and
assimilated as they were dropped in. They were scattered and separated
from each other; some acquired habits of honest industry, and all, if
not reformed by their punishment, were not certain to be demoralized by
it. In New South Wales, on the contrary, the community was composed of
the very dregs of society; of men, proved by experience to be unfit to
be at large in any society, and who were sent from the British gaols,
and turned loose to mix with one another in the desert, together with a
few task-masters, who were to set them to work in the open wilderness;
and with the military, who were to keep them from revolt.
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