… when idle, unprincipled outcasts

were assignable, once set ashore,

to private service: ploughmen,

shepherds, shearers, reapers,

butchers, gardeners, masons,

shoe-makers, house-servants,

being persons of like class,

required to separate

from their former partners in crime

as the first great step

toward reformation,

huts to live in, doubtless more

commodious than the ones they left

back home, with as much fuel

as they chose to cut themselves,

abundant rations of food, allowances

of clothing, bedding, boots,

and the chance to show

their latent goodness, slough off

notorious idleness, become industrious,

trustworthy servants, earn

tickets-of-leave so they might

hire themselves elsewhere

for wages. So manifest

are this system's advantages that settlers

prefer ticket-of-leave men,

who, sentence served,

gain conditional pardon,

free range of all

the Australian colonies. Some achieve

free pardons in the end!

How could anyone utter such words

as ‘white slavery’ or

other opprobrious epithets?

You see how progressive, how

proven the system was!

So when in that perfidious year

of ’42, they changed assignment

to probation, made

hard-labour gangs do public works,

the good was all undone:

man naturally willing and diligent

lapsed into apathetic drones.