When the assignment system came into force as detailed in a foregoing chapter, it was not the intention of the Governor that wages should be paid either to men working for the State or to those in assigned service, and it was not until it was found expedient to work the convicts beyond the ordinary hours, that the question of wages arose. In determining the amount of work required from his convict subjects, Governor Phillip took as a guide his experience of English labourers, but he had also to consider the character of men for whom he was legislating. He did indeed consider it, but not in the way an economist would have suggested. The men were ill-nurtured, and physically and mentally depraved, and these characteristics would seem to have demanded a mitigated task as compared with what a normal man might be called upon to perform. But Phillip was not an economist. He had generous feelings towards his subjects, but he was also a moralist, and it was in this last-mentioned capacity that he proceeded to determine the hours that his men should labour.

His laws were all conceived in the spirit of the primal curse, which designated work a punishment, the life of man a warfare, and his time here below probation, to be spent in weariness and sorrow.