risoners, and the penal administration with which they are entrusted,
is generally the most disguised. Educated men, they are not commonly
haughty and capricious: they are able to distinguish moral imbecility
from perverseness, and both from disease. The habit of scrutinising
quickens their sagacity, and fits them for a station, where the
knowledge of the heart is the great secret of control. Accustomed to
behold human nature, stript of all its external trappings, the grade of
the prisoner, in their estimation, does not wholly debase the man.
Witnesses to the wretchedness of humble life, the squalor of its garrets
and its cellars--observant that want, which sometimes forms the felon,
much oftener makes the martyr, and crowds the hospital rather than the
gaol--they are not incapable of pitying either class of victims. The
horrors which others feel for disease, whether of the body or the mind,
excite no antipathies in men who have devoted their lives to its relief:
thus their government of convicts often affords a singular contrast to
the agency which precedes or follows them. The recollection of their
conduct is mentioned by the prisoner with respect, and even with
fondness. No profession can better prepare for practical benevolence:
what it withdraws from the sensibility it adds to the understanding; and
those in charge of convict vessels have exhibited, in full average, the
virtues of their profession.[74]

When physical suffering became infrequent, and the arrangements secured
both convenience and comfort during the voyage, it was long ere moral
control, or a reformatory discipline, became objects of concern. A
surgeon,[75] employed from 1818, amused the public with the details of
his system of management--not wanting in humanity. He encouraged a
joyous indifference to the past or the future: the prisoners sang from
morning to night, and often spent the evenings in dancing. The greatest
criminals were selected on principle for offices of trust, as far the
most trusty! The discourse was licentious--the feats of thievery, the
chosen topics of amusement and conversation. A stage, decked out with
the remains of former spoil, exhibited "the forty thieves," or a comedy
of judges, officers, and felons: mock charges were enforced by
barristers, arrayed in blankets; the bench was filled with an actor
decorated with a quilt, while a swab covered his head, and descended to
his shoulders. In the female prison ships, dancing and co