possessed, turned him out
of the house, to make room for another. This treatment he could not live
under; and, placing the muzzle of his gun beneath his chin, he drew the
trigger with his foot, and, the contents going through his neck,
instantly expired.

On the 13th, the _Betsey_ whaler arrived from the west coast of
America with 350 barrels of oil. She was extremely leaky, and much in
want of repair. At the same time came in the _Hunter_ bark from
Calcutta, with a cargo on speculation; and on the day following, a
Spanish brig which had been captured by the whaler.

Early in the morning of the 16th, the _Friendship_ transport arrived
from Ireland with convicts. She had been fifty days in her passage from
the Cape of Good Hope, where she left his Majesty's ship _Buffalo_
taking on board cattle for the settlement. The convicts arrived in very
good health, though the ship had been sickly previous to her reaching the
Cape.

Many of the prisoners received by this ship and the _Minerva_ were
not calculated to be of much advantage to the settlement; and but little
addition was made by their arrival to the public strength. Several of
them had been bred up in the habits of genteel life, or to professions in
which they were unaccustomed to hard labour. Such must become a dead
weight upon the provision store; for, notwithstanding the abhorrence
which must have been felt for the crimes for which many of them were
transported, yet it was impossible to divest the mind of the common
feelings of humanity, so far as to send a physician, the once respectable
sheriff of a county, a Roman Catholic priest, or a Protestant clergyman
and family, to the grubbing hoe, or the timber carriage. Among the lower
classes were many old men, unfit for any thing but to be hut-keepers, who
were to remain at home to prevent robbery, while the other inhabitants of
the hut were at labour.

Some clothing had been received by these ships and the _Walker_,
but, unfortunately, not any bedding. The governor therefore purchased a
thousand bad rugs, which had been manufactured in some of the Spanish
settlements on the west coast of America, and were in the prize which
last arrived. These, with a complete suit of the clothing to each, were
now issued to the convicts.

The settlers of several of the districts declining to come forward to
assist with the small assessment of sixpence per bushel on their wheat,
which had been proposed toward the completion of t