Chapter I

Some account of my family—My birth, and subsequent adventures,
until I attain my ninth year, _page_ 1.

CHAP. II.

I am taken from school, and return to my Grandparents—Remove
to Cambridgeshire—From thence again to London, and a second
time to S⸺shire—Different plans proposed for my settlement in
life—Friendship of the Moultrie family—I am sent to Liverpool
on liking, _page_ 9.

CHAP. III.

My employment in my new situation—Seduced by an apprentice
in the house to neglect my business, and keep irregular
hours—Become a frequenter of the Cockpit—Repeated losses at
this place induce me to recruit my finances by embezzling my
employer’s money—Remonstrances on my misconduct producing no
effect, am seriously admonished, and sent back to my friends,
_page_ 16.

CHAP. IV.

I prevail on my grandfather to let me visit London—Am provided
with letters of recommendation—Received into the office of a
respectable attorney, my kinsman—Quit that employment, and
engage with a wholesale stationer—Obtain clothes, _&c._, on
credit, without any intention of paying for them—Bilk my
lodgings repeatedly—Return to the law—Obliged to live by my
wits—Become a hackney waiter—Resort nightly to the Blue-Lion,
_page_ 24.

CHAP. V.

The trip to Portsmouth, _page_ 32.

CHAP. VI.

Still much embarrassed to support appearances—Meet
with a surgeon of a frigate—Our conversation and its
result—Negotiation set on foot with the captain—I obtain
an appointment as midshipman—Fitted out by my friends in
the most liberal manner—Join my ship—Delighted with my new
situation—Account of my messmates, and other matters, _page_ 53.

CHAP. VII.

My rapid progress in navigation—Become a good sailor in
theory—The approach of a severe winter somewhat damps
my pleasure—Begin to repent my bargain—Duty excessively
fatiguing, and situation uncomfortable—Advised to alter my
course—Appointed captain’s clerk, and find myself at home
to a peg—The frigate ordered up the river Thames—I visit
London—Become enamoured of a fair Cyprian—Desert my ship on her
account, _page_ 63.

CHAP. VIII.

Consequences of my imprudent secession—Reduced to
great distress—Become a billiard player—Associate with
sharpers—Engage with a country attorney—Take leave of London
once more, _page_ 74.

CHAP. IX.

Account of my situation at Bury St. Edmunds—Obstinately
determine to relinquish it, and return to London—Defraud
several tradesmen—Quit the town, and arrive in the
metropolis—Obtain a quantity of wearing apparel under false
pretences, _page_ 91.

CHAP. X.

Live gaily for a few weeks on the spoils of my late
excursion—Again obliged to seek employment—Engage with
a conveyancer in the Temple—Apprehended by my late
master—Compromise the affair, through the friendship of a
relation, _page_ 103.

CHAP. XI.

Obtain an employment as clerk and shopman—Rob my employers, and
embezzle several sums of money—Quit this service, and am soon
after taken in custody, and committed to the Bastile, _page_
112.

CHAP. XII.

Fully committed for trial—Acquitted for want of evidence—Fatal
consequences of consigning a young person to a gaol—Meet with a
fellow-prisoner, who introduces me to the company of professed
thieves—Live by fraud and robbery—Trip to Staines—Am at length
apprehended for what I am innocent of, _page_ 128.

CHAP. XIII.

Examined before the Lord Mayor—Fully committed—Tried and
cast—My father’s faith and assurances—My disappointment on
being transported for seven years—Contract the gaol distemper,
and am reduced to the point of death—Recover my health, and am
sent on board a transport for Botany Bay, _page_ 155.

CHAP. XIV.

Sail from England—Account of our voyage—Arrive at Port
Jackson—Write in my own behalf to Commissary Palmer—That
gentleman is pleased to notice my application—Land at Sydney,
and am carried before Governor King—A curious dialogue
between His Excellency and myself—Ordered to Hawkesbury, as
Store-keeper’s Clerk, _page_ 168.

CHAP. XV.

My conduct at Hawkesbury—Continue for three years to give
satisfaction to my principal—Ordered by Governor King into the
Secretary’s Office—Give way to the temptations with which I am
surrounded, and begin to lead a dissipated life, in company
with some other clerks.—Concert a system of fraud upon the
King’s stores, which we practise successfully for some time—The
imposition is at length detected—I am in consequence dismissed
the office, and sent to hard labour for the first time in my
life, _page_ 176.

CHAP. XVI.

Draughted to Castle-hill—Variously employed there—Appointed
clerk to the Settlement—Again noticed by the Governor—Summoned
to Parramatta by the Rev. Mr. Marsden—Appointed Magistrate’s
Clerk, and begin once more to lead an easy life—Preparations
for the Governor’s departure—Mr. Marsden gives me hopes of
accompanying himself and the Governor to England in His
Majesty’s Ship Buffalo—My pleasing sensations at the prospect
of revisiting my native land, _page_ 186.

CHAP. XVII.

The Buffalo being ready for sea, I receive an intimation from
Mr. Marsden, that the late Governor obtained a remission of my
unexpired time, and consents to take me home as his clerk—I
wait on his Excellency accordingly, and receive orders to go on
board—We set sail, _page_ 194.

CHAP. XVIII.

Receive a free pardon from the hands of Captain (late Governor)
King—Account of our passage home—Suffer a great deal from
the want of provisions—Leaky state of the ship—Double Cape
Horn—Fall in with an English frigate, bound to the river
Plate—Arrive at Rio de Janeiro, _page_ 199.

CHAP. XIX.

Account of my adventures at San Sebastian—Form acquaintance
with a Portuguese family—Their affection for me—Overtures made
to induce my stay in South America—The ship being repaired and
victualled, we re-imbark and sail for Europe, _page_ 209.

CHAP. XX.

The ship becomes as leaky as before—All hands in turn at the
pumps—Means adopted to reduce the leaks—I offend the late
Governor, who orders me before the mast—Fall in with the Thisbe
a second time in company with several transports—Unhappy fate
of one of them—Arrive at Spithead, _page_ 225.

CHAP. XXI.

Captain King leaves the ship, which proceeds to Portsmouth
harbour—My melancholy reflections on my confinement to the
service—Preparations for paying off the Buffalo—Employed by
the Purser in arranging the ships’ books—Write to London, and
receive an answer from my mother—Obtain leave to go ashore very
unexpectedly, and effect my escape through the friendly aid of
a total stranger, _page_ 237.

ADVERTISEMENT.

It has been thought that the Public would benefit in more ways than one, by the publication of a work, in which the philosopher may read the workings of an unprincipled conscience, the legislator be let into the operations of the laws upon the criminal’s mind, and the citizen derive a key to the frauds by which he is so easily and constantly beset; and it is not often that thieves are possessed of sufficient truth, memory, vanity, and literature, to tell the story of their own lives. It will be seen that Mr. Vaux, together with an excellent memory, possesses a good share of vanity, and sufficient literature. In the following pages, the former (I think) often magnifies the latter, particularly in the account of the author’s readership at the printing-office; but it is only justice to him to say, that I have found occasion to make very few alterations in his manuscript, which came to my hands ready prefaced and dedicated, and chaptered, as if ripe for his old master’s printing-office—that it was exceedingly well and fairly transcribed; and, (with one or two exceptions) correctly spelled and punctuated.

When Mr. Vaux’s predilection for low company comes to be observed, the reader will justly doubt the great liberality of education and taste for reading, upon which he so often vaunts himself. The quotations in his narrative are all common-place; and I have struck out a few as profaned by misapplication.

As for the truth of the following tale—nobody can vouch for it. I am afraid it is occasionally sacrificed at the shrine of Vanity, who seems to be the author’s patron-saint. He is fonder of confessing himself guilty of frauds, from the punishment of which he escaped, than of those in which he was found out; detection (he thinks) impeaches his cunning; and though he recounts with exultation the theft for which he is now transported for life, that is, because he knows it was committed under protection of, perhaps, the most consummate address and assurance ever exhibited by man—it amounted to the sublime of impudence—and, after all, he was only betrayed into the hands of justice, who, if she had a hundred eyes, would not (it should seem) have enough to detect the dissimulations of James Hardy Vaux. The reader will observe, that he denies his guilt of the crime for which he was before transported, because it was a common, clumsy partnership picking a handkerchief out of the pocket; and so, too, he denies any confederacy with the Judge Advocate’s servant, in robbing his master’s writing-desk, for which offence he was further transported to Newcastle, in this territory, whither he now again is sent for life, for an attempt to escape from the country altogether. The reader must, therefore, believe as much or as little as he pleases of the following story. Of him who confesses himself a liar, the voice must necessarily be listened to with distrust.

“Look to him well; have a quick eye to see;
He has deceiv’d another, and may thee.”

By the laws of all nations, he who is once detected in perjury, is not allowed to bear further witness—the testimony of a king’s evidence must be corroborated—and the confession of a felon is never allowed to prove any thing against another person.

With this _caveat lector_, I dismiss this entertaining and instructive narrative; for so I will call it, thinking it as full of cunning and adventure as “The Life of Guzman de Alfarache—the Spanish Rogue,” if not so profoundly moralized. The religion, indeed, (if it can be so called) of Mr. Vaux is, like that of most convicts, a low sort of fatalism, which may be called _a fatalism after the fact_. The followers of this sect do not connect predestination with “foreknowledge absolute,” but merely comfort themselves with the truism, that when their _misfortunes_ have happened, nothing can prevent them from having happened. Of “free will,” they first suffer the time for the exercise to go by, and then complain of the impotency,—abandoning themselves with an insensibility, which they mistake for resignation, to what they call the predestined and inevitable decrees of “fixed fate[1].” Some of this false complaining has been expunged from the following work; but enough (I am afraid) is left to shew the delusion.

It remains only to be added, that the pecuniary profits of this publication will be applied to the relief of the author, in his perpetual banishment.

B. F—D.

_Sydney, New South Wales, 18th May, 1817._