may be many exceptions;
and at the end of all things here below, it may be found that some of
those poor outcasts, and some of the men who have cast them forth to
perish, and now despise them, may fill, respectively, the places of the
Publican and Pharisee in our Lord's parable; the convict may leave the
throne of judgment justified rather than his master; the poor repentant
criminal may be pardoned, while the proud one,--the self-sufficiency
of the nation, by which he was transported, and left without further
care,--may be condemned. Still, however, the general character of
the convicts is undoubtedly bad; and the various modes of deceit and
dishonesty practised upon their masters, the love of gambling, of strong
liquors, and of every kind of licentiousness prevailing in the penal
colonies, would fill a volume of equal size and interest with that
which is said to be a favourite book in New South Wales,--the Newgate
Calendar. Those that are curious upon these subjects may be referred to
the thick volume in blue cover, which contains an account of the labours
of the Committee upon Transportation, 1837; but when the evidence
therein contained is read, it must be with some grains of allowance;
the avowed object of Sir W. Molesworth's motion for the committee, was
enmity against the whole system of transportation; and a large majority
of those that sat in the committee were, it is believed, of his opinion;
at all events, they belonged to his party in politics. So that, before
justice can be done to the real state of the convicts, we want to have
evidence of an opposite tendency, like that of Mr. Potter Macqueen,
already quoted; and before the question, whether transportation is a
desirable mode of punishing, or a likely means of reforming criminals,
can be fairly decided, inquiry must be made, not respecting what _has
been done_, but respecting what _might have been done_, or _may even yet
be done_, in our penal colonies.

Before the subject of the convict population is dismissed, it may be
well to notice those called _specials_; that is, men of education, and
of a somewhat higher rank in life than the generality of exiles in New
South Wales. These were formerly treated with great consideration; for,
after having passed a short period of probation, they were employed as
clerks to auctioneers or attornies; nay, the instruction of youth was
too often, in default of better teachers, committed into their hands.
Nor was this all