transferred from one master to another, bandied about in this shocking and unnatural way, until the mere figure is all that remains of the human being. Should intemperance, which is always observable in such cases, and excessive extravagance, impair or totally destroy the scanty means of the protector for the time being, the female so engaged looks without concern on the misfortune of which she, perhaps, has been the principal cause, and if another paramour offer, she attaches herself to him with indifference, and so the career of guilt meets with but little interruption.

In several conversations on this disgraceful subject with some well informed men, whose judgement in other matters is deserving of respect, I was assured that no remedy of immediate efficacy could be applied to these evils; that time alone could weaken their malignancy, and that they would wear out of themselves! This shocking conclusion, almost amounting to despair of their eradication, was made by men who daily witnessed these vile practices, and lamented their enormity and prevalence, fully sensible of their miserable consequences.-But the performance of these odious tragedies is not left entirely to the convicts. Others, whose stations ought to claim some degree of respect, seem to vie with those degraded captives for the pre-eminence in guilt, many of them proudly wearing the laurels thus honourably acquired: for these enormities, which depravity has made familiar, even palliation is insolently attempted, and that too on grounds sometimes unpardonably offensive to decency.

I have heard men of reputed good sense and dis

crimination, both here and in New South Wales, argue with much earnestness, and a feeling of exultation which I would willingly consider not real, that the females who have been under the management of the Ladies' Committee generally behave worse during the voyage, and after their arrival in the colony, than those from any other prison whatever; inferring that all the disinterested and zealous exertions of that amiable association have been unproductive of any the least good.-Among those in the colony holding, or at least professing to hold, this opinion, a general feeling seemed to prevail, that all efforts made to form those unfortunate females to habits of virtue, propriety, and industry, were nugatory, and calculated rather to injure than promote the interests of the colony. The very endeavours to prevent illicit intercourse upon the voyage were treated as if they had a tendency to render the women unfit for their proper situations in the places to which they were going! They maintained that the character of these females is utterly reprobate, beyond the possibility of being reclaimed, and that it is therefore useless to think of reforming them,-that they should be abandoned to their wretched lot.

So long as persons holding such sentiments, and acting upon them, would render the subjects of their obloquy incapable of improvement by rekindling their profligacy and contributing to their misfortune, and that such conduct can be followed as an example, so long indeed it is vain to hope that any instruction in prisons can effect permanent reformation. It would not be doing violence to probability, nor, I think, ex

ceeding the bounds of charity, to assert that the prin ciples by which such abettors of vice are actuated are referable to licentious propensities, which the most liberal of them would, perhaps, be unwilling to acknowledge as belonging to himself. Why then would they, for the evidence is strong against them,—desire to continue those wretched women in a state of debasement? Is it that themselves may be allowed to pass unnoticed amidst the general depravity which must be the certain consequence of such a state of things? These men would be stout advocates for the baneful principle of utility described by Hume, or the still more pernicious one of general good so strenuously recommended by Godwin.

While such principles are deemed the basis of moral law, it is impossible to calculate on any other than the most destructive results, as no other can be reasonably expected from a demoralized population, amongst whom honesty and decency are in perpetual violation. Can any reprobation, then, he thought too severe, of that unmanly, ungenerous conduct, which, by fostering vice in the advocacy of self-example, would render a future generation more immoral than the past, and lead to complete anarchy of all the rational powers of the mind? It has been well observed by a late anonymous writer, that "whoever weakens in society the veneration for morality, is a traitor to his country; and whoever diminishes the influence of religion in the world, as a rule of daily conduct, is a traitor to his God."-The language is as forcible as the truth is incontrovertible.

The assertion, however, on which so much stress

is laid, -that the women from Newgate behave worse than those from other prisons,-is deserving of some examination. If we reflect on the state of society in London, and how infinitely more numerous are the opportunities to crime and its consequences than elsewhere; the dissoluteness which always exists in a crowded metropolis; and the daring depravity that: there marks the gradations of offence; if we carefully survey the life of "a regular London female thief who has passed through every stage of guilt, who has spent her youth in prostitution, and her maturer age in theft and knavery; whose every friend and connexion are accomplices;" one of those who are "the refuse of the capital; that is, the very worst description of criminals, committed for the very worst excesses of crime; women who had been frequent inmates of a prison, and with whom thieving was their daily bread:"" if these circumstances, I say, are duly considered, they, must be admitted, by every unprejudiced individual, to form grounds of difficulty in the endeavours to reclaim offenders from their wickedness in such a society, beyond, greatly beyond the less hardened habits of provincial iniquity; and should it even appear that the former behave much worse than the latter on board a ship, it can afford very little cause for ill-judging malignity to triumph. Could aught else, even then, be shown, but that the time those unfortunate women were under the guidance of the Ladies' Committee was too short for the completion of their benevolent purpose? Is it reasonable to expect that long-rooted habits of idleness and vice, impressed on the mind from the first dawning of perception, can be broken through,

and the salutary work of reformation perfected in the few weeks or months they may have been favoured with those pious attentions? But should it be proved that the conduct of the women from Newgate is at least as good, if not better than what is exhibited by those from the country prisons, to what cause shall be ascribed an alteration se rapid, and so little to be expected; an alteration amounting to almost an entire change of natural disposition? It is impossible for scepticism, or prejudice itself, to assign any other cause than the influence of moral precept so kindly and unceasingly inculcated by the Committee.

The women from Newgate formed one third of the entire number sent out in the Morley; and I can declare conscientiously that their conduct was not worse than that of an equal number of the others: on the contrary, the effects of exhortation were more observable in their manner, in a very remarkable degree ; and during the voyage, whenever it was found necessary to rebuke any of them, the mere mention of any of the Ladies of the Committee had the effect of bringing them to a sense of their error, which in almost every instance was attended with profound sorrow, a circumstance certainly not always observable in their companions. I can further assert that there was infinitely more riot, wickedness, and abandonment, amongst seven women who were permitted to accompany the soldiers that formed the guard in the Neptune in 1817, than amongst all the female convicts in the Morley put together: nay, in stating this fact, I cel that the latter are injured by being brought into such a comparison.