short, his business is to work with her, not to wait for her. Every acre of ground may in course of ages become capable of tillage; but our business meanwhile is to place our hungry brethren where nature’s work is forwardest. Among the many grades of fertility prepared by her, it is our wisdom to choose the highest. This is what I preach as the truest gratitude to Providence.”
“I have rather wondered, I own, at the style of your preaching lately.
It would strike a stranger as unusual.”
“I do not preach for strangers, but for my own flock; and if they are not enlightened enough to apply abstract principles, I must help them to do so. I must not only tell them to be honest, but show that honesty can scarcely subsist under overwhelming temptations to theft and fraud. I must not only recommend the domestic affections, but warn against turning them to bitterness by rashly incurring the risk of that destitution under which parents and children learn to look coldly on each other. I must not only speak of gratitude to God, but show how it may be made to spring up by distributing to all a share of his gifts, instead of being starved out by want and woe. If, as I believe, it be true that hardness of the lot brings hardness of the heart, and that blasphemy is a disease of the spirit-broken, how can I and other ministers of the gospel promote its influences so well as by teaching how to bring about that state of society which is most congenial to those influences?”
“Yours is a more likely way to gain your object than theirs who carefully separate the interests of the other world from those of the present.—Well! I am about to preach to the same effect by my actions as you from your pulpit.”
“Then, if you would second my doctrines, you must do the thing I told you I meant to ask of you. You must take down the cottages inhabited by those about to emigrate; and it must be done immediately on their departure, or I shall have to publish the banns of nobody knows how many young couples the very next Sunday. Unless you have inquired into the fact, you will hardly believe how many marry just because there is a house ready. We have too many dwellings in proportion to our food.”
“I have had thoughts already of removing to my new farm some cottages that belong to me, and of buying others from the speculators in our parish funds, who are far too ready to build in our neighbourhood. There will be little encouragement for them to build again when all the surplus population of the parish is located on my pauper farm, where no strangers may intermeddle. You must come and see the ground I have laid out.”
Mr. Jackson readily agreed to go, but had great doubts about the final results of the scheme. This seemed to Mr. Fellowes very strange, as they agreed upon the extent of relief at present wanted, and upon the capability of this farm to supply it.
“It was you yourself who told me, Jackson, that it is not the whole of the people now distressed that it is necessary to relieve. It is only the redundancy that we have to take care of.”
“Certainly: but it should be so relieved as not to produce a further redundancy.—We have among us, as we agree, sixty labourers more than we want. Of these none actually starve, and they therefore deprive some others of a portion of necessaries. It appears accordingly that three hundred are insufficiently fed and clothed because there is a redundancy of sixty.”
“Well! my district farm will take off sixty at once, and more afterwards.”
“And will therefore produce an immediate relief, restoring to the remainder of the three hundred their proper share of necessaries; so would the emigration of sixty. But mark the difference three generations hence. Our young people who emigrate carry their descendants with them to a land where they are wanted. The descendants of your pauper cultivators must be turned out upon society after all, in greater numbers than you now abstract from it. It will be well if the grandchildren of your present dependants have not to emigrate at last, after the expenditure of much capital that might have been better employed, and at a much greater ultimate cost than at present.”
“You seem to forget, Jackson, that the capital I am laying out is all to be reproduced, and that the people on my farm are to work themselves free. If any reliance is to be placed on calculations which have been conducted with the utmost care, if experience is to be trusted, if I may believe what I saw last month with my own eyes in the Belgian colonies (which it is worth a long journey to see), a good deal more than the cost of settling my paupers and providing for them will be raised by their labour upon the ground. The best of them will in time repay me, and go out with money in their pockets to make room for others.”
“And where are they to go? To carry more labour and new families into a market which is already overstocked. How much easier to remove them at once to a labour market where they and their children will be permanently welcome!”
“I am for ever met with objections about raising rents and overstocking the labour-market,” cried Mr. Fellowes—“I that take no rent, and bind myself to employ all the labour!”
“I said nothing about rent,” replied the clergyman. “I am quite aware that a farm like yours, made out of a forced application of capital, bears no relation to the natural process of rent. But I do not see how you can escape the charge of ultimately obliging a portion of society to pay too dear for their food.”
“What can you mean, when the very essence of my plan is——” “Tell me your plan, and then I will tell you my meaning.”
“My plan is to show, on a small scale, how the charity-funds of this country might be employed productively, and therefore so as to fulfil the ends of charity. I would have the unappropriated wastes of Great Britain, amounting to, some say, 15,000,000 of acres, (and some say much more,) set apart to be the People’s Farm. It should be cultivated by means of public funds, say our present poor-rates; and it should be so portioned out as that every pauper should have the interest of private property in his allotment.—The further internal arrangements should be made according to the judgment of the directors. Mine are to be as like as I can make them to those adopted in the pauper farms in the Netherlands. Each family shall have its portion of ground and its cottage, with food and clothing till these can be procured by themselves. The soil shall be improved to the utmost by spade-husbandry, and by preparations of manure requiring more labour than can be devoted to the object in a general way. The productiveness of the ground being usually very great under these methods, I expect a considerable surplus every harvest; of which a part will go to repay the original expenses, and a part to set forward the family when they re-enter the world.
Meanwhile, the women and children will spin and weave, and we shall produce within our own bounds all that we want. We shall not even need money: for the people will pay one another in commodities.”
“That is, you are about to carry back a portion of society to a primitive condition;—to delving, and a state of barter. If there was no choice between the starvation of a number and this state of society, I might be brought to look upon it with some degree of complacency: but when other ways are open,—when the question is,—not whether all shall relapse into barbarism or some starve,—but whether multitudes shall pass their lives in unassisted digging at home, or a few wander to distant parts of this fair earth to leave the many in possession of the blessings of advanced civilization,—I am for applying labour to its highest purposes, and for elevating instead of depressing the pursuits of society. No one doubts that if every hand was employed in tillage there would be food enough for all: the question is whether it be not thus obtained at too great a cost,—every higher pursuit being sacrificed to it. Only convey to fertile regions abroad the half of those who are eager to go, and there will be abundance of food for all,—and of many more things equally essential to the full enjoyment of life. If the Greeks had not done so, what would have become of all that they did to enlighten and bless the world? If they had fed their surplus numbers by employing more and more in tillage at home, as their numbers increased and the produce required was greater, there would now have been little of the philosophy, the literature, the fine arts, which have spread from their country over the world; while, after all, fewer would have lived, and fewer of the living would have been fed than under their system of emigration.”
“They seem indeed never to have thought of the more obvious mode of providing for the people. Away they sent them, as fast as they overflowed their bounds.”
“Because they were so circumstanced as to perceive at once the fallacy of the supposed remedies which you and other benevolent persons here are advocating. The great body of the people among the Greeks were slaves, maintained by masters, and not, as with us, free labourers supported by their own toil. The deficiency of food was there first felt by the masters, in the cost of supporting their slaves. Here, it is felt mainly by the labourers in the fall of the real value of wages. In Greece, there was no dispute about the fact, from the moment that food became deficient. Here, such a deficiency is even now questioned by multitudes who declare that we have not a redundant, but only a poor population; that nobody wants food who has enough to give for it; and that therefore it is money, or work that is wanted, and not food. Such observers give alms, or pay their poor neighbours for digging holes and filling them up again, or doing things equally useless; never dreaming that all the while they are taking food from somebody who has earned it by a better kind of toil. Such follies as this could never be suggested by the state of things in Greece; and I see no reason why, because our lower orders are not slaves, we should not abjure our errors, and adopt such parts of the Grecian policy as were wise.”
“Well, but, the long and short of the matter is this. If the quantity of food in Great Britain is too small, cannot it be increased?”
“To be sure it can. If ten thousand individuals can live this year only by taking a portion from their neighbours, we may raise as much food in addition next year as may feed ten thousand people; but if the people at the same time increase still faster, how are we better off than we were before?”
“But cannot we raise enough that year for twenty thousand people instead of ten thousand, to meet the difficulty? The People’s Farm would admit of this.”
“It would: but here the question recurs, whether it will not answer better to send the ten or twenty thousand people where they may obtain food at much less cost of toil and capital, and where their descendants will not be liable to tax the mother country for food for generations yet unborn. At home it is only by a considerable sacrifice that the growth of food can be made for any length of time to equal,—or by any extraordinary effort to outstrip the demands upon it; while, abroad, it spontaneously keeps ahead of population, and will do so in many parts, till men have grown wise enough to regulate population. Our best present policy, then, is to send our surplus numbers abroad to eat and prosper, instead of obliging more and more of our multitudes to dig at home. It is on your wish to make them do so much labour for a lesser instead of a greater production, that I founded my charge of your ultimately making a part of society pay too dear for their food.”
“You mean because labour is the price of food?”
“Yes; and food would be almost as much too dear under your system as under the present. At present, the competition for food is so excessive that men bid their labour against each other to desperation. Under your pauper-farm system, the same thing would take place in time; and in the meanwhile, every bushel of wheat would cost twice or thrice as much labour as in Van Diemen’s Land; so that both immediately and ultimately, you oblige a certain number to pay higher for their food than they need do and therefore ought to do.—And this without taking into consideration the change in the proportion of capital to population which is caused by emigration,—a change most beneficial to the mother country.”
“And how extensive do you conceive that change to be? There is very little difference between the cost of conveying persons to Van Diemen’s Land, and settling them on a pauper farm,—too small a difference to warrant such an expression as yours.”
“In addition to this difference, there is all the increase of production which will take place abroad, and which is so much gained to the mother country, since it maintains her people. Besides this, all that would have been unproductively consumed by the pauper descendants of these emigrants may be considered as so much clear gain to the community.
Again,—the thriving population of our colonies will want more and more of our manufactures, and will send us their agricultural produce in exchange; and I suppose you will not question the advantage of investing our capital in manufactures, and receiving wool and wheat of the best quality in return, instead of laying it out on lands of inferior fertility at home, while the people scantily supply themselves with the coarse manufactures of their own firesides? You will not question the duty of availing ourselves of the advantages of division of labour in the case of our greatest need? Yet you would, by your plan of home colonization, deprive the people of this reciprocity of benefits. You would set up new manufactures instead of a new market for them; and all for the sake of producing food at a greater cost than under the emigration system. You are clearly wrong, Fellowes, depend upon it. What a pity that you should not turn your zeal and benevolence and your other resources to the best account!”
“The fact is,” replied Fellowes, “that on a matter of so much importance as this, I am anxious to go on sure ground. I have heard so much on good authority of the miseries of emigrants in Canada and elsewhere, and I have seen so much with my own eyes of the benefits of the Home-Colonization system in the Netherlands, that I am induced to do that which I know will produce great and immediate good, instead of that whose consequences I cannot witness or calculate. I want to give our poor neighbours food; and I dare not run the risk of having them perish with cold and hunger in the woods before they can get any.”
“If you mix up the abuses of a system with its principles,—if you take the conduct of a few ignorant adventurers as an example of what is to be done by all emigrants,” continued Mr. Jackson, “I do not wonder at our differing as we do. It is true that too many of our poor neighbours, heartsick at their condition here, have wandered forth with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a hatchet in their hands, without the guidance and assistance which are necessary to their very lives in a new climate and condition of society; but this folly, and the consequent hardship, have nothing to do with emigration. It is to preclude such evils that I would have benefactors like you demonstrate to the people what is essential to a successful emigration, and that emigration is sure to be successful if well conducted. As for its ultimate results, time will teach them to all; but you, my dear Sir, with your objects and your resources, will be inexcusable if you do not endeavour to anticipate them. It will be unpardonable in you to adopt a manifestly short-sighted policy while the philosophy of principles and the evidence of facts lie open before you.”
“Fact is enough for me, romantic as many of my friends think me,” replied Fellowes, smiling. “The fact will be, as you will witness, if we both live, that two years hence our sixty superabundant labourers with their families will have food without burthening the parish. This is enough for me.”
“It will not always be enough. If you should live to see the multiplied descendants of these sixty persons either suffering themselves under pauperism, or displacing an equal number from the ranks of employed labourers, you may wish that they had been located where there was room for all without any arbitrary direction of capital, or factitious employment of labour. If, in your old age, you do not witness this, it will be because others have repaired your mistake by conveying elsewhere the surplus you have created.”
“If we both live ten years, friend, you shall come and see how I send forth those who once were paupers, with money in their hands, ready to establish themselves reputably in society. There will be nothing in this to make me repent.”
“No; your time for repentance will be when each of these monied men sends two paupers to your gates;—when you find poverty growing up round you, which you can relieve,—if at all,—only by a late emigration. I am sure you will make your confessions to me honestly, if that day should ever come.”
“I will, if you will give me faithful tidings of the Castles, and the others who are going with them. Let me hear of all their struggles and trials, from the outset till the end.”
“You shall, as far as I know them myself. Meanwhile, let us help one another where we agree. Do you be on the watch to lessen the number of dwellings as much as you can, and I will use my pastoral influence in inducing the young folks to delay the publication of their banns till they have secured something besides a bare shelter to begin with.”
-------------- CHAPTER III.
GOING IN SEARCH OF HOME.
Mr. Jackson’s interest in the subject of emigration to Van Diemen’s Land first arose out of his friendship with a gentleman and lady who were appointed by government to superintend the selection and preparation of the young women who were assisted in their settlement in the way already related. His recommendations were received with the confidence naturally resulting from this intimacy; and he had interest to get arrangements made for Frank’s convict brothers to be settled near the rest of the family. In course of time, which seemed very long to impatient paupers, all was settled. Ellen had a summons to be in London by a certain day, with her 8_l._ in her pocket, and a small sum over for the purchase of such necessaries in the way of clothing as should be provided cheap for her by those who were to receive her, see her safe on board, and furnish her with a letter to the governor, stating her family circumstances.
Frank and his parents, with a few more labourers from the parish of A——, were to sail in another ship about the same time, proposals having been sent before them to Van Diemen’s Land, to bind themselves to farmers for a term of years at a certain rate of wages, out of which the parish was to be repaid for the expenses of their passage and outfit.
The outfit was much less expensive in their case than in that of settlers in Canada and the western states of America, both because the climate of Van Diemen’s Land is more congenial to English constitutions, and because wearing apparel and other necessaries are much more easy to be had there, even if not supplied by settlers as a portion of the wages of labour. Frank was furnished with a complete set of tools; and the family with a stout suit of clothes each. A stock of plain substantial provisions for six months was added, and this was all. There were a few grumblers about the last-mentioned article. They thought that the parish might, at parting, treat the people with better cheer than they had been accustomed to; but the parish authorities were wiser. They had heard how many lives had been lost on the passage to America from the poor Irish, who had been accustomed to nothing better than potatoes, being fed with an abundance of more stimulating diet, under circumstances which prevented their taking their usual exercise; and when, from having nothing to do, they were tempted to eat more than they wanted of good things that they could not get at home. The nearer the diet on ship-board resembles that in common use, the better for the health of the emigrant; and if he finds himself less disposed to eat than when at the hard labour he has been accustomed to, no harm will come of his temperance.
As the day of departure approached, Frank felt it a positive evil that every thing was done for himself and his family by the parish, as too much leisure was left for very unhappy thoughts. He had no idea till the time came how much there was to be left behind which even he could not help regretting. He had indeed no beloved cottage to quit, no favourite stock to sell off, no circle of attached friends and neighbours to say farewell to; but he would fain have had such regrets as these to bear, for the sake of something to do at the last. He envied his sister at her needle, making a gown for her mother when she had finished her own linen, while he wandered over the hills that looked towards the sea, or watched for the postman who was to bring the final tidings for Ellen, or stood with his arms folded, silently hearing his father’s murmurs or his mother’s taunts. He was quite angry with himself for selfishly wondering what he should do with the three days that were to pass between Ellen’s departure and his own, when he ought to be glad that she would be out of hearing of the uncomfortable sayings that now met her ears continually.
The hour came when the young people ought to be setting out to meet the carrier’s cart which was to convey Ellen to London. When Frank thought he had waited long enough before the door, he went in to look for her, and found her with her bonnet on, her bundle by her side, and little Susan on her knee. Her eyes were running over with tears; but she smiled when he tapped her shoulder as a signal that they must go.
“It seems like a long parting, just because I am going a long way,” said she, trying to laugh. “But if we all go to the same place, and there are meadows and cows, and the same sort of life we have been accustomed to, there is little to mind in going, except Mr. Jackson, to be sure, and grandfather, and—and——” “Where is father?” asked Frank, distressed at her sobs; “surely he is not gone out just now?”
Ellen ran to the door to look about for him, and saw her father leaning against the wall.
“Where’s your money?” he asked. “You had need take care of money when you have got it. All the rest is moonshine, to my thinking.”
“There is very bright sunshine where we are going, if they all say true,” said Ellen; “and that you will find, father, before a year is over. You may trust Frank and Mr. Jackson, I am sure; and so——” “I trust nobody. I have had enough of trusting people,” cried Castle.
“All this is your doing, remember, both of you; so never cast it up to me. Go, go. ’Tis getting very late. Where’s your money, I ask you, child?”
“Safe, father, sewed into my stays. But, father, what _can_ happen to us so bad as living here, as—as—we have done lately?”
“Go, children, go, and leave off talking about our meeting again at the other side of the world. If I go to the bottom half-way, Ellen, it will be none the worse for you, but the better, except that Frank must go too, and you would not like that so well.”
“O father——!”
“Well, one kiss more; and God bless _you_, whatever becomes of me!”
Ellen found her step-mother gossipping with a neighbour as if nothing was happening. Her farewell words were few.
“Goodbye. If I find you an honest woman next time I see you, it’s more than I expect, from what people say of the place you are going to. Come, now, Frank, don’t be in a passion. Better take care of your sister than look so proud about her.”
Frank now took care of his sister so far as to remove her while she had strength to go.
“O Frank!” she cried, as he put her arm within his own, and led her rapidly on, “what can there be about me that makes them all talk as they do?”
“Nothing about you, dear, but about the place. It is a dangerous place for vain, silly girls; but you need only mind your business, and think of father and mother, and what we have agreed to do for them, and you will do well enough.”
“And of Mr. Jackson, and grandmother, and how she almost broke my heart last night. Look, look! do you see how yonder trees stoop and shiver in the churchyard? What a shower of leaves!”
“’Tis a sudden gust. There have been many such of late.”
“Just so they went when Molly Shepherd’s funeral was going under them, and grandmother bade me beware of her shame. ’Tis just like a sign to me now! And here comes Mr. Jackson too.”
Mr. Jackson just stopped her to give her a little book as a remembrance, and to beg her to write to her grandfather, of whom he should inquire for her from time to time. It was now really very late.
“Don’t hurry yourself,” said Frank. “Walk quick if you like, but don’t be flurried. I’ll overtake the cart for you, I’ll be bound; and you had better look like yourself as you get in.”
The carrier was just cracking his whip to proceed after a halt, when the brother and sister made their appearance at the end of the lane. Ellen cast one glance back upon the familiar spire and hedgerows and cottage roofs, and summoned up one bright smile and a few more words for Frank.
“’Tis not as if you were to stay behind, Frank.”
“To be sure not! Leave every thing to me dear, and be steady and easy, that’s all; and don’t talk of Bob and Jerry, for your own sake.—All right, carrier?—Well then, good bye!”
And high on the hedge stood Frank, gazing long after he had ceased to distinguish the bright face looking out at the back of the cart. Not till the vehicle had disappeared behind the hill did he descend to the stubble-field below, and pick up straws, and cut hazel switches like a truant boy, muttering to himself “In three days we shall be off.”
The second departure was more public and more painful. The two old folks would come out at the last moment; and their distress moved the gazers to an outcry against the cruelty of deserting them, and the unnatural behaviour of leaving one’s country and kindred. A giddy young couple thanked the Castles for vacating their cottage just when others were wanting one; and of the rest, some who were disappointed of going looked on in silent envy, and others were loud in their reports of the dangers of the sea, and the horrors of savage life. Frank had seated his charge in the waggon and walked on, intending to be overtaken out of hearing of these busy tongues. He looked back from the first corner, and seeing that there was great confusion, returned. Castle was motioning away the parish officers and Mr. Jackson, and doggedly refusing to go after all.
His wife was laughing, and little Susan crying.
“You must please yourself, father,” said he firmly. “If you put yourself out of the way of being helped by your own children, God help you! I must go, and that this moment.”
“Come along!” cried the wife. “We may as well get out of reach of these plaguy officers, with their talk of our debt to them. Let’s be off, and then they may get their money as they can. We shall never drive our carriage here, as they say my boys may do at Botany Bay. Come along!”
Frank would allow of no force, His father should choose for himself. So said Mr. Jackson.
While he was choosing, a ready pauper jumped into his place, and the waggon drove off. Before it had gone two hundred yards, there was a cry to the driver to stop, the new candidate was turned out grumbling, and Castle scrambled in. Twenty times during the journey to London, he asked how he and his were to pay the seventy pounds required to send them out; and as often his wife bade him not mind whether it was paid or not; and Frank assured him that he should not be burdened with debt, if his children lived and prospered. Tears came at last to the unhappy man’s relief. As he passed villages and farmsteads where healthy and cheerful faces looked up at the waggon as it went by;—as he heard the saw grinding in the saw-pit, and the hammering at the forge, he wept at being reminded of his younger and more prosperous days, and at the thought that while so many were busy and happy in their occupations, there was no room for him,—once as hearty in his toil, and now as willing to work as any of them. Frank contrived to gather what was in his thoughts, and spoke of the saw-pits and forges which are so busy in the land they were going to, and of the increased dignity and profit of such occupations in places where artificers are scarce. His own heart was ready to sink when he fancied, instead of such a busy region as that under his eye, plains and valleys with scarcely a roof visible from end to end: but every glimpse of a workhouse, every notice by the way-side about vagrants, restored his courage, and satisfied him that it was best, at all events, to be where, whatever other evils might exist, there was no pauperism.
The departure of Jerry and Bob took place in a somewhat different style.
A stranger would have fancied there was high holiday in Newgate the day before they went. Parties of convicts from the country arrived, and were lodged there previous to embarkation, and the larger proportion were full of congratulations to one another on their fine prospects. This was done in bravado by some, no doubt; and a few looked downcast, and were laughed at by their companions for the shame expressed in their countenances and manners: but it was actually the belief of most that they were lucky fellows to be carried free of expense to a country where they should have little to do but get rich as fast as they liked. Two among them had been transported before, and so wonderful and tempting were the tales they had to tell, that they not only found willing listeners among criminals wherever they went, but had induced more than one of the present company to commit thefts in order to get transported and put in fortune’s way. These men, Giles and Green, held forth in all the vanity of superior experience, and in all the pride of having cheated the law; and drew an attentive audience round them while waiting for the cart which was to convey the company to the convict-ship.
Bob was leaning rather despondingly against the wall, when his brother clapped him on the shoulder, and asked him why he looked so black on this the grandest day of his life.
“You should have said ‘thank’ee’ to the judge, Bob, as I did when he finished with us; and so you would if you’d known how we were obliged to him. We’ll have each a house and servants, and all handsome about us by the time we’re one-and-twenty, and meanwhile, there are fine pranks to be played. Come and hear Green, about how he and his set got as much rum in one night as they could drink in a month, and what frolics they had in the woods, before he took it into his head to come back without leave.”
Bob shook himself free of his brother, who however would not long let him alone.
“I say, Bob,” he continued, returning, “they call you sulky; and it will be the worse for you in the colony if they report you sulky. You may as well hear what we are to do when we get there.”
Bob listlessly followed, and took his place among the eager hearers.
“Bet Turner!” cried one. “What is that she that belonged to Greville’s gang? She that got transported for shop-lifting?”
“The same. Well; she has a large white house just out of Sidney, on the right hand as you go out of Mount-street. Lord! you should see her driving out, how grand she looks over her servants, and as well behaved to her husband as if she had not left another behind her. They say she sends Turner a bank note every year out of charity. He has married again to give her satisfaction that he won’t claim her; so they are both content.”
“Then there is Wilson,” cried Green. “You remember what a poor ragged creature he was while he worked like other honest men, for nine shillings a week. He got sent abroad for the first bad shilling he tried to pass after he joined us; and all for looking like a bungler at a new trick. He worked his way up into a farm of his own in four years, and he has got his wife and children over, and is very much respected. But Jack Lawe is the finest fellow of them all. He’s just past thirty, and he is as rich as a London banker at sixty.”
“What, he that was within an hour of hanging?”
“Aye. They looked pretty close to him for a long while; but he is as sharp in his wits as he is clever at whatever you set him to. He cheated them all round, and got himself free in six years, and now you should see him out hunting or betting at billiards. He is a good-hearted fellow, and does not scorn old friends. Many’s the nod and word he has given me from the billiard-room window at Sidney, when I have been passing, let who would be there. Everybody is glad of the prosperity of John Lawe, Esq.”
Somebody having made inquiry about the voyage, Green went on, “O, that’s the worst part of it. It’s horrid enough, to be sure, to be cooped up for months on board, and all so solemn and dull, and no getting out of the way of the clergyman. But it’s not so bad as it used to be, when they treated such folks as we like so many wild beasts. They paid the captain so much a head for the people embarked, and never asked how many he landed; so he starved as many as he pleased, and stowed them so close that scores were stifled by the way. It was mighty dull work then for those that got safe; the labour was so hard, and no liberty.
There was little encouragement to go to the colonies then. But now that they don’t kill one by inches by the way, it is worth putting up with the passage, for the chance of making one’s fortune at the end of it.”
“Particularly for them that have friends in power to get fine situations for them,” said Jerry pertly. “Bob and I are going to have good care taken of us, I hear. But it’s a great plague that the old ones are going to be spies over us. It will spoil our sport terribly, unless we can manage to cut them.”
“That’s better than having them whining and praying after us all the way from here to the ship, as the old folks mostly do,” said Green. “When I went before, my father behaved as if he was following me to the gallows.
He knows better now. He gave me the wink yesterday for a sharp chap that knew how to take care of myself. He said,—true enough,—that the worst blunder I ever made was coming back when once I was well off.”
“Aye, aye, Green; a certain person knew how to take care of herself as well as you. She knew better than to keep herself single five years for you. ’Tis a fine feather in her cap to have brought you so far on a fool’s errand.”
Green tried to conceal his visible passion under an appearance of indifference, while he muttered that a better one than he came for would follow him out very soon, if the judge did not baulk them of the sentence they meant to get pronounced upon her.