HISTORY OF 



I is much to be regretted, that any persons 

 should have been sent to New South Wales for 

 their political connections. Above all places 

 in the world, they could not have been sent to 

 a worse, and the worse their cases might be, 

 strange as it may seem, it was the more highly 

 improper, for what must be the result? The 

 convicts, all depravity themselves, admired, ra- 

 ther than despised them ; and the generous con- 

 duct of the Government to Muir, and others 

 in not putting them to hard labour, was con- 

 strued into a pity which their fates might seem 

 to deserve, and what had nearly been the effect 

 of sending these people — but the overthrow 

 of the country, and the massacre of the offi- 

 cers composing the government. For my part, 

 might I be permitted to offer an opinion on the 

 best way of both deterring, in the first place, or 

 preventing a repetition of crimes, it would be 

 by placing those convicted to hard labour in 

 the public streets or highways for a given time, 

 being fully convinced that it is the detestation 

 of work that causes at least one half of the 

 crimes in all parts of the world to be commit- 

 ted. Death, with all the horrors which can be 

 made to accompany it, is not half so dreadful 

 as work to this class of mankind. Let them be 

 placed and kept to hard labour in view of the 

 public for all crimes but murder, and it would 

 be found there would, in a short time, be fewer 

 executions, and no need to transport more con- 

 victs to New South Wales. The Hulks were 

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