Their provisions became so nearly exhausted, that famine stared them in the face; the Guardian frigate, to which they were anxiously looking for supplies, was wrecked on an island of ice; and the next ship that followed, instead of a cargo of provisions, brought out about 220 female convicts, many of them old, infirm, and diseased. Four other transports arrived in succession, with convicts on board in one of them, out of 218 males, 200 were on the sick list; in the other three the deaths in the passage amounted to 261 men, 11 women, and 2 children. Another transport brought among them the gaol fever, of which, out of 300 embarked, 95 had died on the passage. But all this misery and wretchedness is easily accounted for. The convicts were shipped off and victualled by contract, not at so much per head for the number landed in the colony, but for that received on board, so that the more the deaths, the greater the profit to the contractors. What a disgrace to those who had the management of the business, and what compunctions ought they to feel, (if still in existence,) when they read that Mr. Cunningham has carried out six hundred convicts, male and female, without losing a single individual! The conduct of the convicts called frequently for the punishment of death. Robberies were constantly committed. They burnt down the prison at a time when twenty criminals were in it loaded with irons, some of whom perished in the flames. They were compelled to rebuild it; and then set it on fire a second time they burnt down the church, and even set fire to the grain which was destined to feed them. Numbers perished in the woods, chiefly Irish, who took it into their heads, that by proceeding northerly, they would speedily reach China. This infatuation, we are rather surprised to find from Mr. Cunningham, still exists, and he gives a ludicrous story of an Irishman who set out on this expedition, and after three weeks hard toiling, was cheered with the distant crowing of a cock. A garden, with a snug cottage, gave a new fillip to his joy, and the more so because of its close resemblance to those he had left in New South Wales; but on seeing an European, in whom he discovered the features of Colonel Johnstone, he was in ecstasy, and hallooed out, Arrah! long life to you, colonel! And what has brought your honour to China all the way?' The fact was, that the Irishman, in keeping straight forward, had made some unfortunate right about face,' and thus travelled back to within a few miles of the spot from which he had started. Many are still persuaded that the Blue Mountains are those of Connaught, and when they take a freak of making their way to Ireland, Mr. Cunningham tells us they always go southerly, because Green Erin being colder than New South Wales, and the cold cold winds blowing from the south, the land of their fathers must needs lie in that direction. The folly and absurdity of these people are scarcely to be credited. A party having determined to set out for Ireland, one of them, more knowing than the rest, proffered himself as their guide, having torn out the print of a compass from a book of navigation, by which he proposed to steer them a direct course to their own country; but it was soon discovered, to Pat's mortification, and the discomfiture of the party, that, somehow or other, the paper compass had lost its magnetic properties in this part of the world. In the early stages of the Australian colonies, and with such materials as they were composed of, it can hardly be a subject of wonder, that a considerable number of years must have elapsed ere the convicts were brought under such subjection, and as well managed as they are at present. Unmerited blame, in our opinion, has attached to former governors for the readiness with which they granted letters of emancipation and tickets of leave, to enable convicts to hire themselves out to individuals; and though we are ready to admit that these indulgencies, when granted too promiscuously, were liable to abuse, we are quite satisfied that the encouragement thus given contributed mainly to the rapid progress of the colony towards that state of prosperity which it has now attained. If the convict occasionally abused the indulgence, and reverted to his former criminal habits, (as was the case,) the members of the colonial government might plead in excuse the utter ignorance in which they were kept of the nature of the crimes for which the transported felons had respectively been tried and convicted; a piece of information which might have enabled them to form some notion of the character and degree of guilt of the several delinquents. In vain the constituted authorities complained that no list of convicts, not even of their names, was ever sent out along with the cargo, much less a specific catalogue of their several crimes. The complaint, it would seem from Mr. Cunningham, still exists, though it must be obvious how valuable such a list would be to the colonial authorities in making the disposition of fresh cargoes as they arrive. Mr. Cunningham gives an amusing account of these convicts, while under his charge on board ship, and of their characters as they are developed in the course of the outward voyage. The greatest and most daring rogues, it seems, maintain their preeminence, and are always selected by the rest as captains of the deck; while the next in the scale of villany are made petty officers. The same thing takes place in the female convict ships, where some old experienced bawd generally takes charge of the morals and good conduct of the young ones. There are always, among a cargo of either sex, a few who pretend to have reformed their lives, and are constantly to be seen with the bible in their hands; but Mr. Cunningham soon discovered that these were invariably the greatest hypocrites and the least worthy of trust-in short, the very worst of the set. Among numerous instances of this bare-faced hypocrisy, he mentions that of one Breadman, who, on arriving at Sydney, was in the last stage of consumption, and unable to sit up without fainting. This expiring wretch, who grasped his bible to the last, mustered strength enough, while the hospital-man was drawing on his trowsers, to stretch out his pale trembling hand towards the other's waistcoat pocket, and actually to pick it of a comb and penknife:-next morning he was a corpse. Yet,' says Mr. Cunningham, during his whole illness, this man would regularly request some of the soberminded rogues to read the scriptures to him, and pray by his bed-side! There was another who assumed the character of a saint, one Jones, a Welshman, who, while in the hospital, was so fond of scripture-reading, that 'I never passed his berth,' says Mr. Cunningham, without observing him earnestly toiling away, with a pair of huge spectacles arched over his nose, or else the bible lying close to his hip, ready to be snatched up on the instant. Indeed, so earnest was he in his religious exercises, that he could not even attend muster without the bible in his hand, and his forefinger stuck between the leaves to mark the passage he had been reading.' This fellow robbed the surgeon's assistant who attended him of a sum of money. Shade of Le Sage! who shall deny that father Hilary and brother Ambrose de Lamela are but too true portraits of poor frail human nature! It was just the same thing among the first settlers. They stripped each other of their blankets, and the dying men watched with eagerness the moment of snatching away the covering of his neighbour, even before the breath was out of his body.' The women are described as infinitely more difficult to manage than the men; but those composing the cargo which our author once superintended, were pretty well kept under by an old sybil of seventy,' a most trust-worthy creature,' who had been, during forty years of her life, in all the houses of correction, prisons, and penitentiaries of the metropolis. Some of Mrs. Fry's reformed damsels from Newgate, very soon after getting on board, set about papering their hair with the religious tracts that this good lady had supplied them with for their edification. Bad and unpromising as materials like these are, to be thrown into the mass of society, it is admitted by most writers that the present prosperity and the population of the Australian colonies are mainly owing to the industry and ingenuity which such convicts transmit to their progeny. And yet, if we may credit the following statement, extracted from the State of Agriculture and Grazing in New South Wales,' by Mr. Atkinson,* an old established settler, we should be obliged to come to a very different conclusion, or, at any rate, very considerably qualify the laudatory reports which have been so largely bestowed on the emancipists and others who became early settlers : 'The first settlers in the colony were obtained from among the military and convicts; very few of these men had any knowledge of agriculture, being mostly derived from inhabitants of great towns, or from the very lowest orders of the people: thoughtless and negligent, as might naturally be expected from their early habits and subsequent life, with very little regard for the comforts and conveniences of civilised society, their whole desires were confined to the obtaining sufficient food: clothing, except what decency absolutely required, they had little regard for; and to bring up their families with respectability, and make a comfortable appearance in the world, never once entered their minds. Their absolute wants being satisfied, the whole surplus produce of their labour was expended in intoxication and debauchery. Men of this description were but little calculated to improve and beautify the face of the country, and develope its agricultural capabilities; accordingly, their farms exhibit to this day nothing but a scene of confusion, filth, and poverty. Their first necessarily rude habitations of bark, are still unreplaced with more comfortable dwellings of brick or timber; and their families have been suffered to grow up without education, useful knowledge, or religious principles. I beg here to be understood as only alluding to the early settlers, and the lower orders of the present-what are technically termed in the colony Dungaree Settlers, from a coarse cotton manufacture of India, which forms their usual clothing: a more improvident, worthless race of people, cannot well be imagined. It unfortunately happens that the greater part of these people have been located on the banks of the Hawkesbury and Nepean, and in the district of Airds, the best lands in the colony.'-Atkinson's Agriculture and Grazing in New South Wales, pp. 28, 29. Mr. Atkinson, however, confines his statement to the old settlers, soldiers, and convicts, who in the early periods of the colony had no good example to follow. For some years past the case has been different, a more intelligent and respectable population having spread itself over the colony. The 8vo. London, 1827a useful little work. amount amount of this population is rather over-stated by Mr. Cunningham, in making it amount in round numbers to forty thousand. By a census taken towards the end of the year 1825, it stood as under : - From this return, it would appear that the number of adult emigrants amounts only to 6828; whereas that of convicts, emancipated and in servitude, is 23,459, being in the proportion of about three and a half to one ;-that the emancipists alone are equal in numbers to the adult emigrants;-that about one-half of the population are convicts in a state of servitude, the other half consisting of free settlers and emancipists. We think, therefore, that Wentworth and Cunningham are fully borne out in ascribing mainly to the labours of the convicts the prosperous condition of the colony. It is distinctly stated by the former writer, that the value of the property now possessed by emancipists is fully double that of the free settlers. It will be observed, from the above return, that the disproportion of the male to the female population is enormous, being fifteen to one nearly among the convicts, and in the total population three to one. This is unquestionably a great evil, and seriously felt as such; but it is one, we fear, difficult, if not impossible, to remedy. It might, perhaps, be diminished to a certain extent, by abolishing penitentiaries and asylums for the reformation of female delinquents at home, the success of which is, at best, very equivocal. When |