has occasionally ways and means of procuring the unhallowed indulgence, independently of his master. Emancipated convicts are scattered all over the territory, and too frequently obtain their livelihood, not by honest industry, but by corrupting the convict and emancipated convict population,—selling ardent spirits on the sly, as it is called, and receiving in exchange property or goods that are generally pilfered or stolen from their owners for the express purpose of procuring the means of indulgence. But if a settler is so vigilant on the one hand, or so fortunately situated on the other, as to render it impracticable for his convict servants to obtain the means of intoxication during their period of bondage; or if, as is often the case, they conduct themselves with propriety during that period, in expectation of their more speedy liberation; they receive tickets of leave, or permission to employ themselves within a certain district for their own advantage, after a period of servitude in proportion to the term of their original sentence, provided they have committed no crimes or misdemeanours in the colony: and it often unfortunately happens, that convicts who have conducted themselves with great propriety as assigned servants—behaving themselves during the whole period of
