e exercise of the mind, and has
already produced an improvement in that wretched state. Besides, it
surely is only fitting that a great, a free, and enlightened nation
should know what is the ultimate fate of a part of its outcast
population; nor need Englishmen shrink from hearing the _history_,
whilst England herself shrinks not from inflicting the _reality_ of
those horrors which have defiled the beautiful shores of Norfolk
Island.[193] In 1834 Judge Burton visited this spot, the penal
settlement of a penal settlement, for the purpose of trying 130
prisoners, who had very nearly succeeded in overpowering and murdering
the military, after which they intended to make their escape. Eight
years before this time, Norfolk Island had been first made a penal
settlement; and never during all that period had its wretched
inhabitants received any such reproof, consolation, or instruction as
the Church gives to its members. The picture presented before the mind
of the judge was an appalling one, and he can speak of Norfolk Island
only in general terms, as being "a cage full of unclean birds, full
of crimes against God and man, murders and blasphemies, and all
uncleanness." We know well what bad men are in England. Take some of the
worst of these, let them be sent to New South Wales, and then let some
of the very worst of these worst men be again removed to another spot,
where they may herd together, and where there are no pains taken about
their moral or religious improvement, where, literally speaking, no man
careth for their souls:--such was Norfolk Island. And what right had
England to cast these souls, as it were, beyond the reach of salvation?
Where was the vaunted christian feeling of our proud nation when she
delivered these poor creatures over to the hands of Satan, in the hope
that her worldly peace, and comfort, and property might be no longer
disturbed by their crimes? Had she ordered her fleet to put these men
ashore on some desolate island to starve and to die, the whole world
would have rung with her cruelty. But now, when it is merely their souls
that are left to starve, when it is only the means of eternal life that
they are defrauded of, how few notice it, nay, how few have ever heard
of the sin in which the whole nation is thus involved!

[193] It is right to state here that the cause of a supply of religious
instruction having been so long delayed in Norfolk Island is said, by
a Roman Catholic writer, to