New South Wales in a very healthy state, and are found to be more obedient and more sensible of kind treatment during the passage than any other class. Their separation from their native country is observed to make a stronger impression upon their minds, both on their departure and during the voyage."
Amongst the remarkable Irish convicts who were shipped to Sydney by the home authorities was Edward O'Shaughnessy, a man of conspicuous ability. He was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and, in his new sphere at the antipodes, his talents advanced him to the position of editor of the official journal of the colony, the Sydney Gazette, Mr. Flanagan[1] describes him as "an effective political writer, and endowed with considerable poetical talent, which he employed for some years in cultivating a taste for literature amongst the colonists." As showing the shameless severity of the laws during the early years of the century, Major Marjoribanks mentions the case of an Irish gentleman who died in New South Wales some years ago worth a quarter of a million of money. And yet this gentleman, who accumulated such vast wealth in the colonies by honest industry, was transported from home in his youth for the alleged offence of taking a handkerchief out of the pocket of a pedestrian. But the cleverest and most celebrated pocket-picker that ever landed on the shores of Australia, or the shores of anywhere else, was George Barrington, the name by which he is generally known, or George Waldron, to give him his baptismal title. His remarkable achievements have furnished many themes for literary and dramatic treatment, and quite recently
