Chapter 10 - Page 2

they had at home. They want to better themselves as well as you do, and, the supply being limited, they will ask and get from 1 pound to 30s. a week besides their board and billet.

You must remember you will have a rough life at first; there will be a good deal of cold and exposure; a good deal of tent work; possibly a fever or two; to say nothing of the seeds of rheumatism which will give you something to meditate upon hereafter.

You and your men will have to be on rather a different footing from that on which you stood in England. There, if your servant were in any respect what you did not wish, you were certain of getting plenty of others to take his place. Here, if a man does not find you quite what he wishes, he is certain of getting plenty of others to employ him. In fact, he is at a premium, and soon finds this out. On really good men this produces no other effect than a demand for high wages. They will be respectful and civil, though there will be a slight but quite unobjectionable difference in their manner toward you. Bad men assume an air of defiance which renders their immediate dismissal a matter of necessity. When you have good men, however, you must recognise the different position in which you stand toward them as compared with that which subsisted at home. The fact is, they are more your equals and more independent of you, and, this being the case, you must treat them accordingly. I do not advise you for one moment to submit to disrespect; this would be a fatal error. A man whose conduct does not satisfy you must be sent about his business as certainly as in England; but when you have men who DO suit you, you must, besides paying them handsomely, expect them to treat you rather as an English yeoman would speak to the squire of his parish than as an English labourer would speak to him. The labour markets will not be so bad but that good men can be had, and as long as you put up with bad men it serves you right to be the loser by your weakness.

Some good hands are very improvident, and will for the most part spend their money in drinking, a very short time after they have earned it. They will come back possibly with a DEAD HORSE TO WORK OFF--that is, a debt at the accommodation house--and will work hard for another year to have another drinking bout at the end of it. This is a thing fatally common here. Such men are often first-rate hands and thoroughly good fellows when away from drink; but, on the whole, saving men are perhaps the best. Commend yourself to a good screw for a shepherd; if he knows the value of money he knows the value of lambs, and if he has contracted the habit of being careful with his own money he will be apt to be so with yours also. But in justice to the improvident, it must be owned they are often admirable men save in the one point of sobriety.

Their political knowledge is absolutely nil, and, were the colony to give them political power, it might as well give