happy, good wages, plenty to eat and drink, and very little to do, still my thoughts are fixed upon home.'

No. 3.

DEAR PARENTS, -I am doing very well at present, carrying on the business of a boarding establishment. I have taken my premises on a lease for three years, which is capable of accommodating thirty people, and nearly that number I have now in my house; two milking cows, one goat, fowls, ducks, &c., all which I keep for my own use, and 50l. cash in the bank, besides my household goods and cooking utensils, which are worth 1007. I have to thank my God for his lasting kindness in preserving me, and carrying me through so many trials and temptations over the vast trackless ocean.

'Dear Friends, the country I am in is certainly a very fine one in many respects-plenty of work-no one to do it, and excellent wages given to every one. Even a common labouring woman in my house gets 201. per year and everything found them; even myself, I am giving a man cook 261. per year, his food, lodging, and washing found him, and the lowest terms for washing clothes is 3s. per dozen. I wish you could but come out to me, you would never regret it, especially my sisters; there is every prospect of their doing well and making a fortune. Í stand the heat very well indeed, and I like the country, though not so well as my own England. I should before now have sent you a little money; but I do not know where you are, or whether you are living or dead, by my not having a letter from you. Depend upon it, dear relations, I will not forget you now I have it in my power to do so. A long and happy life to you, my dear parents and affectionate sisters.'

No. 4.

Corio Street, Geelong, Port Phillip. 'MY DEAR WIFE,-I am happy to inform you that I have been fortunate enough to get into a comfortable shop, where I am getting my thirty guineas a-year, board, lodging, and washing. I have been at work for eight weeks, and, thank the Lord, I am very comfortable indeed. My dear Hannah, I dare say you have been waiting with an anxious heart, to know of my safe arrival. We had a long passage, better than four months before I set my feet on dry ground; but thanks be to God for his great mercy towards us, for bringing me, I may suppose, into one of the finest countries in all the world. Dear Hannah, my master has been trying if he could get you and the children out free, but I am sorry to say that he cannot. I shall be able to send 281., if I have my health, and it will take 301.; but my dear wife, I should not feel comfortable for you to come out by yourself, it is a long passage for you and the two dear children. If you could get Mary Ann, or your brother John, as they might do wonderful well here. A female servant is looked upon here in a very different light to what they are in England. They are getting from 20l. to 30l. a-year, and men-servants from 30l. to 401. Even a common farming lad gets his 201. or 221. a-year. You may depend that I should be glad to have you over. It is true that I have been sent out of the country against my wish;

but

but you could come different to that. It would be to our advantage to be together, because less would do for us than to be separate.

‘Dear Hannah, I have not told you of my freedom-I am as free as ever I was in England. No one ever looks upon me as a prisonerquite the reverse; but I cannot leave the colony until my time is up.

You can go to Mr. Kingsmill and let him read my letter, for it was his wish, and it is no more than my duty, for he was a kind fatherly gentleman to me; and I am happy to say that I am able to go to my church every Sunday, which I know he will be glad to hear. Those dear children have set a mark upon my heart that I never can forget, for my daily prayer is for you and the dear little creatures. If alive, they must be grown two beautiful children. I wish I could send them a few parrots, for they fly about like pigeons; you may buy them of the natives for 6d. each. They are very handsome indeed: in fact the country abounds in such sort of birds.

'The snakes are death if not taken in time, and rarely got over. They are things that I hate very much; but I am not up in the country where they are; for it would be awful to me to go amongst the natives, for they are cannibals. They met one of the first lot of men that came from Pentonville: they made him strip, aud then felt him. A very fine thing for him that he was not fat enough for them, so they let him go again. But they are not so savage where I am; so do not let this frighten you in coming out. My dear Hannah, I think you would like the place very much if you were only in it. The time seems long to me, and always will, till I can get with you again; and, my dear, I hope there is a better prospect than ever there was in England, and by the time my 12 months is up that I shall be as good a tradesmau as my master. Of course I could not take my work as a man that had been brought up to the trade, but, thank God, I get on remarkably well. My master is very well satisfied with me. He is a teetotaller, and so am I, and mean to be so till I have got you over. My dear Hannah, we live most excellently. I went to-night to the butcher's, and bought a leg of mutton, 8 lbs. weight, for 16d. Three of us sat down to tea off it, cut up in chops, and the rest we put away for breakfast, please God we are all spared.

'I always think of you and my beloved children-bless their pretty hearts. Give them a thousand kisses for me, and tell my dear little Johnny I shall want him soon to work as a tinker with me. It is as good a trade as any one in the colony; for earthenware is very dear here. A teacup and saucer is 6d. the commonest, so that they all use tin. I hope you have spent a comfortable Christmas. My dear, I hope you have plenty to eat and drink, for I have an abundance. I had to cook my master's dinner, and he said it was the best dinner he ever eat. They are very partial to me, and he leaves me in charge of the shop to sell anything that may be asked for. We have three shops, so that I and two more stop in this one; and, my dear wife, I will do him justice, because he is deserving of it. Now, my dear beloved wife, I wish you all a happy new year, and many of them. God grant that this may find you alive and my blessed children, as it leaves me this night, thank

God

God for it. Forgive me, my dear wife, the ill that I have done you, and I hope it will be in my power soon to assist you. God bless you all, and farewell for the present, till we shall meet again, to part no more.'

No. 5.

Melbourne, in Port Phillip, March, 1847.

My dear and affectionate Wife, 'I have to inform you that Mr. has got his wife and child here; they came out in the "Spartan" barque, from London, a month after our arrival, and are quite well and doing very comfortable. My dear, allow me to say, with truth, it was not riches and wealth, which she could have obtained had she have stopped with her friends; but it was pure love that she had for a poor fallen one, whom it hath pleased the Almighty God to raise again, that made her come out the four months' voyage to him. My dear, I trust that there is some share of that pure love that did once exist left for me, and cause you and my dear child once more to make me happy. My dear, I did think that 'I should have received a letter from you before this time. My dear, living is so cheap, that a man, his wife, and a family of four children may live for 10s. a-week, and have meat three times a-day. My dear, the shipwright's pay is from 7s. to 8s. a-day. If you cannot get friends to fit you out and our dear child for the voyage, write, and that as soon as possible, and I have no doubt it will be in my power to remit you what you may require for the purpose. You will, if you please, remember me to Mr. Kingsmill, a kind and benevolent Christian. Tell him I am quite well, and by the blessing of the Lord and my perseverance I trust that I shall prosper, and once more be the means of supporting and making happy and comfortable my wife and child. Thank him for all his kind admonitions to me. Give my respects to Mr. Woodcock, my instructor. I hope he and his family are quite well.'

When Mr. Baker, one of whose letters we have quoted, arrived this year in Australia Felix, one of his former charge met him with the exclamation We have all tumbled on our legs, sir.' He soon found this to be the truth. Within fifteen months the majority of those whom he had formerly carried out were well off. One could afford to pay 1507. of rent for an inn; several had houses costing 30l. to 407. per annum. Melbourne, the capital, had added 3000 souls to its population. The bush teemed with its denizens. Boats full of these enterprising men came alongside the ship, eager to hire farm-labourers and other servants.' Such was the demand, that the contractor for governmentworks refused to take up any further engagements, in consequence of the very high rate of wages. A long list of Pentonville men, with their wages, their masters, and location, is now before us, which would raise the envy of many an honest struggler at home-board, lodging, and 257. to 30l. a-year. The large proprietors

prietors being short of emigrant-hands, and without prospects of getting them from home, were sending vessels to Polynesia for natives, sixty of whom had already been located on one gentleman's property (Mr. Boyd's).

Here, then, is a labour-market which, it is plain, would for many years absorb thousands upon thousands of our population; and, from the nature of the country, it affords that great desideratum of criminal management-the power of dispersion. Thoughtful men, however, have been startled at the enormous advantages which this new system offers to criminals, and which seems to make punishment look very like reward:

'I entirely agree,' says Lord Denman, 'in the opinion that advantage should be taken of imprisonment to inculcate principles of morality, but I greatly dread the effects of giving them benefits and privileges which they never could have hoped for but from the commission of crimes. I own myself extremely jealous of the gratuitous instruction of the felon in a trade merely because he is a felon, and of the displacement of the honest from employment by his success in obtaining it.' These words, we venture to say, will be recalled hereafter. They open a most grave question. Meantime, not to wander from our own immediate object, it seems to be the opinion of all the Superintendents, that under the discipline of the Separate System, with its industrial and moral training, and the subsequent deportation of criminals to a good labour-market, the great majority are reclaimed. Transportation so conducted, and with such results, is not likely, in the present state of public feeling, to want its powerful supporters; we need not, we think, doubt that it will be retained as a secondary punishment. We have abundant proof, however, that colonising with rogues' alone, or even aggregating them in numbers disproportionate to the honest part of the community, is both a blunder and a crime. The expedient of scattering convicts over the face of the globe, smuggled under the name of exiles into colonies whose laws forbid their entrance as criminals, is an acknowledgment on the part of the executive of the principle of dispersion, on that of the colonists of their willingness to receive such men as labourers. At home it is found that the reformatory discipline has disposed friends and employers to receive again into their circle of society the convicted and chastised criminal. Other than our penal colonies might perhaps be induced to revise their laws, and permit the introduction of transports as labourers in aid of emigration; we all know that most of these are crying out for hands, and can we tell why those of the reformed criminal must be less useful at the Cape, in Canada, in New Zealand, than in Australia Felix?

But then the expense !-the expense! In our anxiety to save

money,

money, we forget to look at the cost of our criminal population at home. Here, however, is Mr. Rushton, the head of the police department at Liverpool, ready to furnish us with the bill. He finds that the cost of fourteen young criminals who ran their career at home averaged at least 100 guineas a-head-independent of the expense of transportation for ten of them, and irrespective of the value of their depredations on the community-while from 1833 to 1841 the total cost of seventy-seven boys put into the Reformatory Asylum at Stretton, was exactly 10267. Of these seventy-seven boys, forty-one were effectually reformed :

'If you divide the cost,' adds Mr. Rushton, 'by the number reformed, it will be found that whilst our Liverpool system has cost 100 guineas each case, and that ten of the fourteen have been transported, it has cost only 25 guineas in the asylum where forty-one out of the seventy-seven have been reformed.'-Report on Crim. Law, p. 192.

According to our present system of punishment, the prisonpopulation is in a perpetual circulation of contamination and crime. First, poor, neglected, or brought up to the trade of crime; next, in custody and before the courts-thence to the prison and hulks, and from these again thrown among their old associates, till the same necessities and temptations once more reproduce them before the judge. In this way not less than 6000 of the present inmates of prisons in England and Wales have been committed each from four to ten times. In 1839 the exact number was 5573. The cost of each prisoner in our countygaols is about 267. a-year, or 10s. a-week. In the model-prison the net annual cost is 287. per man, after deducting his earnings, or 331. exclusive of such deduction. On these data Mr. Baker has estimated the expenses charged on the country by a convict sentenced to ten years' transportation-say one of Mr. Rushton's juveniles, who had previously cost Liverpool 100 guineas in detections and prosecutions. This convict will cost, on an average— Eight weeks in the county gaol

Eight weeks in Milbank

Passage to Van Diemen's Land

£ 4

4

17

Four years' maintenance in Van Diemen's Land 80

£105

By the previous processes then he had cost 1007., and it requires another hundred to transport him:-the sole advantage to the country his absence from it: the moral part of the question sunk altogether. Under the Separate System, including that eighteen

A Plan for Emigration, for diminishing Crime and Misery, and for saving Public Money,' MS., which we trust may be rendered public.

months'