to impossible to bring an offence home to the transgressors. And with
respect to their intercourse with the natives, though the convicts who
suffered from them generally contrived to make out themselves to be
in the right; yet, even upon their own showing, every accident that
happened was occasioned by a breach of positive orders repeatedly given.
In New South Wales, no less than in every other country, obedience to
lawful authority was proved to be the safest and best way, after all;
nor could that way be forsaken with impunity.

[84] See Barrington's History of New South Wales, p. 171. See, too,
another instance at p. 385.

[85] This conduct was so common, that, when provisions became scarce,
the supply was issued _twice_ in the week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Amid the mass of moral corruption, which the British ships had thus
imported into the coasts of New Holland, the only hope of infusing
health and purity was from religion. But, unhappily, the age in which
that expedition left the English shores, was certainly not a religious
age; if there was less _hypocrisy_ then than there now is, certainly
there was less _real piety_. In the great towns of the mother country,
population and wealth were allowed to make rapid strides, without a
single thought being entertained of applying a portion of the increasing
wealth of the nation to the spiritual instruction of its increasing
population. If there was no room for the poorer classes of society at
the parish church, it was thought they might go to the meeting-house;
and if there was no room for them there, they might stay at home on
the Lord's day and be idle; it was doing no worse than many of their
betters, in a worldly sense, were constantly in the habit of doing.[86]
While notions and practices of this nature prevailed at home, it was
not to be expected that any very extraordinary attention would be paid
to the religious instruction of the convicts and other settlers in New
South Wales. Yet since, even then, it would have been thought shocking
to have left a large gaol, with 757 prisoners in it, altogether
destitute of the offices of religion, so it could not have been expected
that the same number of convicts would ever have been cast forth as evil
from their native land, and their souls left to perish on the other side
of the globe, without a single chance, humanly speaking, of receiving
those blessings of forgiveness and grace, which Christ died to pro