be dragged to the light of day, by the exertions of bold and virtuous men. If we had found, from the Report of Mr. Bigge, that the charges of Mr. Bennet were without any, or without adequate foundation, it would have given us great pleasure to have vindicated the Governor; but Mr. Bennet has proved his indictment. It is impossible to read the foregoing quotation, and not to perceive, that the conduct and proceedings of Governor Macquarrie imperiously required the exposure they have received; and that it would have been much to the credit of Government if he had been removed long ago from a situation which, but for the exertions of Mr. Bennet, we believe he would have held to this day.

The sick, from Mr. Bigge's Report, appear to have fared as badly as the sinful. Good water was scarce, proper persons to wait upon the patients could not be obtained; and so numerous were the complaints from this quarter, that the Governor makes an order for the exclusion of all hospital grievances and complaints, except on one day in the month-dropsy swelling, however, fever burning, and ague shaking, in the mean time, without waiting for the arrangements of Governor Macquarrie, or consulting the mollia tempora fandi.

In permitting individuals to distil their own grain, the Government of Botany Bay appears to us to be quite right. It is impossible, in such a colony, to prevent unlawful distillation to a considerable extent; and it is as well to raise upon spirits (as something must be taxed) that slight duty which renders the contraband trade not worth following. Distillation, too, always insures a magazine against famine, by which New South Wales has more than once been severely visited. It opens a market for grain where markets are very distant, and where redundance and famine seem very often to succeed each other. The cheapness of spirits, to such working people as know how to use them with moderation, is a great blessing; and we doubt whether that moderation, after the first burst of ebriety, is not just as likely to be learnt in plenty, as in scarcity.

We were a little surprised at the scanty limits allowed to convicts for sleeping on board the transports. Mr. Bigge (of whose sense and humanity we really have not the slightest doubt) states eighteen inches to be quite sufficient-twice the length of a small sheet of letter paper. The printer's devil, who carries our works to the press, informs us, that the allowance to the demons of the type is double foolscap length, or twenty-four inches. The great city upholsterers generally consider six feet as barely sufficient for a person rising in business, and assisting occasionally at official banquets.

Mrs. Fry's* system is well spoken of by Mr. Bigge; and its useful effect in promoting order and decency among floating convicts fully admitted.

In a voyage to Botany Bay by Mr. Read, he states that, while the convict vessel lay at anchor, about to sail, a boat from shore reached the ship, and from it stepped a clerk of the Bank of England. The convicts felicitated themselves upon the acquisition of so gentlemanlike a companion; but it soon turned out that the visitant had no intention of making so long a voyage. Finding that they were not to have the pleasure of his company, the convicts very naturally thought of picking his pockets; the necessity of which professional measure was prevented by a speedy distribution of their contents. Forth from his bill-case this votary of Plutus drew his nitid Newlands; all the forgers and utterers were mustered on deck; and to each of them was well and truly paid into his hand a five pound note;

*We are sorry it should have been imagined, from some of our late observations on prison discipline, that we meant to disparage the exertions of Mrs. Fry. For prisoners before trial, it is perfect; but where imprisonment is intended for punishment, and not for detention, it requires, as we have endeavoured to show, a very different system. The Prison Society (an excellent, honourable, and most useful institution of some of the best men in England) have certainly, in their first Numbers, fallen into the common mistake, of supposing that the reformation of the culprit, and not the prevention of the crime, was the main object of imprisonment; and have, in consequence, taken some false views of the method of treating prisoners - the exposition of which, after the usual manner of flesh and blood, makes them a little angry. But, in objects of so high a nature, what matters who is right? -the only question is, What is right?

less acceptable, perhaps, than if privately removed from the person, but still joyfully received. This was well intended on the part of the Directors: but the consequences it is scarcely necessary to enumerate; a large stock of rum was immediately laid in from the circumambient slop boats; and the materials of constant intoxication secured for the rest of the voyage.

The following account of pastoral convicts is striking and picturesque :—

'I observed that a great many of the convicts in Van Diemen's Land wore jackets and trousers of the kangaroo skin, and sometimes caps of the same material, which they obtain from the stock-keepers who are employed in the interior of the country. The labour of several of them differs, in this respect, from that of the convicts in New South Wales, and is rather pastoral than agricultural. Permission having been given, for the last five years, to the settlers to avail themselves of the ranges of open plains and valleys that lie on either side of the road leading from Austin's Ferry to Launceston, a distance of 120 miles, their flocks and herds have been committed to the care of convict shepherds and stock-keepers, who are sent to these cattle ranges, distant sometimes 30 or 40 miles from their masters' estates.

'The boundaries of these tracts are described in the tickets of occupation by which they are held, and which are made renewable every year, on payment of a fee to the LieutenantGovernor's clerk. One or more convicts are stationed on them, to attend to the flocks and cattle, and are supplied with wheat, tea, and sugar, at the monthly visits of the owner. They are allowed the use of a musket and a few cartridges to defend themselves against the natives; and they have also dogs, with which they hunt the kangaroos, whose flesh they eat, and dispose of their skins to persons passing from Hobart Town to Launceston, in Exchange for tea and sugar. They thus obtain a plentiful supply of food, and sometimes succeed in cultivating a few vegetables. Their habitations are made of turf, and thatched; as the bark of the dwarf eucalyptus, or gum-trees of the plains, and the interior, in Van Diemen's Land, is not of sufficient expanse to form covering or shelter.'-Report, pp. 107, 108.

A London thief, clothed in kangaroo's skins, lodged under the bark of the dwarf eucalyptus, and keeping sheep, fourteen thousand miles from Piccadilly, with a

crook bent into the shape of a picklock, is not an uninteresting picture; and an engraving of it might have a very salutary effect-provided no engraving were made of his convict master, to whom the sheep belong.

The Maroon Indians were hunted by dogs-the fugitive convicts are recovered by the natives.

The native blacks that inhabit the neighbourhood of Port Hunter and Port Stephens have become very active in retaking the fugitive convicts. They accompany the soldiers who are sent in pursuit; and, by the extraordinary strength of sight they possess, improved by their daily exercise of it in pursuit of kangaroos and opossums, they can trace to a great distance, with wonderful accuracy, the impressions of the human foot. Nor are they afraid of meeting the fugitive convicts in the woods, when sent in their pursuit, without the soldiers; by their skill in throwing their long and pointed wooden darts, they wound and disable them, strip them of their clothes, and bring them back as prisoners, by unknown roads and paths, to the Coal River.

They are rewarded for these enterprises by presents of maize and blankets; and, notwithstanding the apprehensions of revenge from the convicts whom they bring back, they continue to live in Newcastle and its neighbourhood; but are observed to prefer the society of the soldiers to that of the convicts.'Report, p. 117.

Of the convicts in New South Wales, Mr. Bigge found about eight or nine in a hundred to be persons of respectable character and conduct, though the evidence respecting them is not quite satisfactory. But the most striking and consolatory passage in the whole Report is the following:

The marriages of the native-born youths with female convicts are very rare; a circumstance that is attributable to the general disinclination to early marriage that is observable amongst them, and partly to the abandoned and dissolute habits of the female convicts; but chiefly to a sense of pride in the nativeborn youths, approaching to contempt for the vices and depravity of the convicts, even when manifested in the persons of their own parents.'-Report, p. 105.

Every thing is to be expected from these feelings. They convey to the mother-country the first proof that the foundations of a mighty empire are laid.

We were somewhat surprised to find Governor Macquarrie contending with Mr. Bigge, that it was no part of his, the Governor's, duty to select and separate the useless from the useful convicts, or to determine, except in particular cases, to whom they are to be assigned. In other words, he wishes to effect the customary separation of salary and duty-the grand principle which appears to pervade all human institutions, and to be the most invincible of all human abuses. Not only are Church, King, and State, allured by this principle of vicarious labour, but the pot-boy has a lower pot-boy, who, for a small portion of the small gains of his principal, arranges, with inexhaustible sedulity, the subdivided portions of drink, and, intensely perspiring, disperses, in bright pewter, the frothy elements of joy.

There is a very awkward story of a severe flogging inflicted upon three freemen by Governor Macquarrie, without complaint to, or intervention of, any magistrate; a fact not denied by the Governor, and for which no adequate apology, nor any thing approaching to an adequate apology, is offered. These Asiatic and satrapical proceedings, however, we have reason to think, are exceedingly disrelished by London juries. The profits of having been unjustly flogged at Botany Bay (Scarlett for the plaintiff) is good property, and would fetch a very considerable sum at the Auction Mart. The Governor, in many instances, appears to have confounded diversity of opinion upon particular measures, with systematic opposition to his Government, and to have treated as disaffected persons those whom, in favourite measures, he could not persuade by his arguments, nor influence by his example, and on points where every man has a right to judge for himself, and where authority has no legitimate right to interfere, much less to dictate.

To the charges confirmed by the statement of Mr. Bigge, Mr. Bennet adds, from the evidence collected by