FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE. BY MARCUS CLARKE, AUTHOR OF 66 OLD TALES OF A YOUNG COUNTRY," HOLIDAY PEAK," ETC. RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, MELBOURNE: SYDNEY: ADELAIDE: BRISBANE: AUCKLAND: 1886. This edition is especially issued by the Proprietors of the Copyright for circulation in the Australian Colonies only. JUNE, 1885. DEDICATION ΤΟ SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. MY DEAR SIR CHARLES,-I take leave to dedicate this work to you, not merely because your nineteen years of political and literary life in Australia render it very fitting that any work written by a resident in the colonies, and having to do with the history of past colonial days, should bear your name upon its dedicatory page; but because the publication of my book is due to your advice and encouragement. The convict of fiction has been hitherto shown only at the beginning or at the end of his career. Either his exile has been the mysterious end to his misdeeds, or he has appeared upon the scene to claim interest by reason of an equally unintelligible love of crime acquired during his experience in a penal settlement. Charles Reade has drawn the interior of a house of correction in England, and Victor Hugo has shown how a French convict fares after the fulfilment of his sentence. But no writer-so far as I am aware-has attempted to depict the dismal condition of a felon during his term of transportation. I have endeavoured in "His Natural Life " to set forth the working and the results of an English system of transportation carefully considered and carried out under official supervision; and to illustrate in the manner best calculated, as I think, to attract general attention, the inexpediency of again allowing offenders against the law to be herded together in places remote |