have been the impossibility of finding a
clergyman to undertake the charge. See Ullathorne's Reply to Burton,
pp. 39, 40. Supposing this account to be correct then, undoubtedly, the
English Church must share the blame of neglecting Norfolk Island along
with the government, and it is not the wish of the writer of these pages
to deny the applicability of the prophet's confession to ourselves:
"O God, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes,
and to our fathers, because we have sinned against Thee." (Dan. ix. 8.)
Still, even according to Dr. Ullathorne, the penal settlement was
established six years before its religious instruction was thought of
by the government.

One of the prisoners tried in 1834 was a man of singular ability and
great presence of mind, and by him Norfolk Island was represented to be
a "hell upon earth;" and so it was as far as the company of evil spirits
glorying in evil deeds could make it. "Let a man's heart," he added, "be
what it will, when he comes here, his man's heart is taken from him, and
there is given to him the heart of a beast." Another said, "It was no
mercy to send us to this place; I do not ask life, I do not want to be
spared, on condition of remaining here; life is not worth having on
such terms." Another unhappy being was sentenced to die, and began
passionately to exclaim and entreat that he might not die without
confession. "Oh, your honour," he said, "as you hope to be saved
yourself, do not let me die without seeing my priest. I have been a very
wicked man indeed, I have committed many other crimes for which I ought
to die, but do not send me out of the world without seeing my priest!"
This poor man was a Roman Catholic; he seems not to have known that he
might go at once to his Heavenly Father with a heartfelt acknowledgment
of his faults, and so he obtained a rude figure of the cross, and
in miserable agony pronounced before that, as he embraced it, his
brief exclamations for mercy. Others mentioned in moving terms the
hopelessness of their lot, and another of them spoke also of what
rendered the state they were in one of utter despair; and the statement
which he made was perfectly true: he said, addressing the judge, "What
is done, your honour, to make us better? once a week we are drawn up in
the square opposite the military barrack, and the military are drawn up
in front of us with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, and a young
of