justice, fifty-one cases occurred up to 1843 of wages unjustly detained or taxed. For the first time the emigrant found a "friend."
The abuse of power by captains, and the immorality of the inferior sort of surgeons, at that time engaged in the Australian trade, were checked by a prosecution which she compelled the governor to institute against parties who had driven a girl mad by their violence.
When Sir George Gipps, hesitating, said, as officials will say, "A government prosecution is a very serious matter," she answered, "I am ready to prosecute: I have the necessary evidence; and if it be a risk whether I or these men shall go to prison, I am ready to stand the risk." That trial established a precedent and checked the abuse.
By the end of 1842 Mrs. Chisholm had succeeded in placing comfortably two thousand emigrants of both sexes, and then, when slowly recovering from the effects of a serious illness brought on by her exertions, she published the remarkable report to which we have before alluded.[1]
It is a collection of notes and memoranda, interspersed with pithy remarks and pathetic and comic sketches from real life—a valuable contribution to the art of colonisation, and a literary curiosity. It was an outspoken book; it did not mince matters—as, for instance, in the following passage, which went far to kill the bounty system, and so, although people were shocked, the evil was abated:—"One girl, long known at Liverpool as the Countess, arrived per ship; the last time I saw her was on a Sunday; she had evidently started in the morning, with an intention to look interesting at either St. James's or St. Mary's, for her book was in her hand; but she had taken a glass by the way, and was so far aware of her state that she retired to the domain. I saw her fall twice. Now people express their astonishment 'that English girls are not sent out.' We will suppose that some Liverpool families are meditating this step, and, in their anxiety to obtain all information, they learn that the Countess is missing—has left for Australia (by a bounty ship). They condemn all for one—they shrink with horror from sending their daughters where the Countess is received—they are strangers to all on board, therefore all suffer for one. I wish particularly to call attention to the injustice done to girls of good character by a case of association, and not a solitary one like the one I have stated. Again, in Sydney, the character of the Countess is known in less than two hours, and the girls of good character in the same ship suffer."
In this "Countess" story was the germ of one great feature of
- ↑ "Female Emigration considered in a Brief Account of the Sydney Emigrants' Home. By the Secretary. Sydney: James Tegg, 1842."
