The increased demand for assigned servants, enabled Governor Arthur to enforce the regulations which had been often promulgated in vain. It ceased to be necessary to pay wages, and the master was bound to provide sufficient food and clothing for his men: the scale was determined. The practice of lending out servants was restricted, and finally abolished. All those means of stimulating labor, which had tended to suggest the rights of property, were forbidden. It had been the custom to permit assigned servants to receive a share in the increase of stock; allotments of land had been separated to their exclusive use; they had been suffered to trade upon their own account. These arrangements were calculated to stimulate industry, but they also generated disputes, and led to petty theft. Thus reduced to an absolute dependance upon the liberality of their masters, they had no reward but as a boon: many of whom, however, evaded the regulations, and paid their servants the ordinary wages of free men.
No rule can be devised, that is not liable to objection. The men were discontented with a service, in which money was refused them: it was illegally possessed, and therefore rapidly spent in debauchery and drunkenness. The settlers usually allowed some luxuries; but these, discretionally given, were a tax to the liberal, often more onerous than reasonable wages. Domestic servants, and those entrusted with important concerns, were paid by all, from the Governor downwards, and that while regulations were promulgated against such violations of order.[163] It was doubtless not at his direction, but at his cost!
A decision at Sydney, explained the nature of the claim for wages granted by former regulations of government. A female, at the close of a long servitude, sued her master for arrears: the judge advocate declared "his court one of equity and right," not of law; that the spirit of public orders, not their letter, was the rule of judgment; that the allowance of money required by the crown, was intended to secure the plaintiff certain comforts: those comforts she had already enjoyed, and thus her claim in equity had been already satisfied (1823). The wages of a man servant were stopped by the magistrates, because he had been accused of stealing from his master (1821)!