Mr. D. Now, instead of conciliating and disarming such individuals, the approved method in the Australian colonies has generally been to catch at such expressions with the utmost avidity, and to interpret them, forsooth, as signs of disaffection to the constituted authorities, to withhold from the obnoxious individual all indulgences for the future, and thus to enable him to join with other individuals in similar circumstances in organizing a regular faction in petto. In managing and controlling such factions, however, the governor must have a point d'appui, or some influential portion of the community to look to for countenance and support; but as there was no free emigrant population in New South Wales to supply this desideratum, the earlier Governors had to form one for their own interest and convenience out of the class of emancipated convicts; elevating individuals of that class to situations of influence and authority, and loading them with favours and benefactions. By this means the emancipated convicts were at length encouraged and enabled, by the Government of New South Wales, not merely to step forward from that state of comparative obscurity to which they had been tacitly consigned, as well by their own right feelings as by the general consent of society, in Van Dieman's Land; but to constitute themselves a separate
