244 HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, ETC., 



character of the case,) that another dead man was found in the same 

 place three months before, and upon that occasion a coroner's jury 

 had acquitted the prisoner Cowan, upon the evidence of the man 

 Kerr; and this deposition of Kerr's, after his death, was given in the 

 court, on evidence in favour of the same prisoner, when Cowan was 

 subsequently tried ; and was the main ground of his acquittal. 



" In another case, an old man was acquitted of maliciously shooting 

 at a servant in his employment, and the means taken to procure that 

 acquittal, was a charge of felony set up against the principal witness. 



" These, and many other instances still more disgusting, had brought 

 him to the conclusion, that there was an overwhelming defect of reli- 

 gious principle in this colony. There was a great deficiency of 

 religious instruction and instructors. 



" He had visited the penal settlement, where he saw them herding 

 together without any chance of improvement. A man who had been 

 brought before him for sentence, observed, in a manner which drew 

 tears from his eyes, and wrung his heart, ' That let a man be what he 

 will, when he comes here, he is soon as bad as the rest ; a man's heart 

 is taken from him, and there is given to him the heart of a beast.' 



" He felt bound to say, that masters of convicts were not sufficiently 

 attentive to the morals of their men. It had been proved before him, 

 that highly respectable persons near a church in the same town, not 

 only neglected to oblige them to attend the worship, but actually 

 suffered them to spend the Lord's day amidst scenes of drunkenness 

 and debauchery. It had been further proved, that the Lord's day 

 by some masters, was made a day of labour, some other day being 

 allowed to them as an equivalent. He was sorry to add, that many of 

 the worst crimes which had been brought under his notice, were 

 committed on the Lord's day, and he was led to apprehend that there 

 was a very general disregard and desecration of it. 



" He had been induced, by what had been proved before him in 

 that court, gravely to consider the question of convicts working out 

 of irons, and felt convinced that it was one of the most fruitful sources 

 of crime to be found in the colony. He had before him a return, from 

 which it appeared that the number of convicts at this time employed 

 upon the roads, is two thousand two hundred and forty ; of whom one 

 thousand one hundred and four are out of irons. And when they (the 

 jury) considered who these men were, and what they had been ; that 

 they left their huts in any number, armed or unarmed, as they 

 pleased ; from the evidence he possessed respecting the conduct of 

 these road-parties of the colony, it would appear that those establish- 



