ABSTRACT
It was the obvious reply to Stanley'S argument that the free settlers were only in Van Diemen's Land on sufferance. For that matter, his system, as it actually worked out, was hardly more satisfactory to Government than to the settlers. Despite an improvement in the demand for labour, there were at the end of 1845 3,268 passholders still awaiting hire, maintained at the expense of Government, little better off than they had previously been in the probation gangs, and teceiving no such reward for industry as the system led them to expect.
