erally had to contend with innumerable obstacles, which
only undaunted patience, firmness of mind, and constancy of purpose,
could overcome. But, whatever the amount of difficulties attendant on
the foundations of colonies, those difficulties were greatly augmented,
in New South Wales, by the character of the first settlers. The
offenders who were transported in the past century to America, were sent
to communities the bulk of whose population were men of thrift and
probity; the children of improvidence were dropped in by driblets
amongst the mass of a population already formed, and were absorbed and
assimilated as they were dropped in. They were scattered and separated
from each other; some acquired habits of honest industry, and all, if
not reformed by their punishment, were not certain to be demoralized by
it. In New South Wales, on the contrary, the community was composed of
the very dregs of society; of men, proved by experience to be unfit to
be at large in any society, and who were sent from the British gaols,
and turned loose to mix with one another in the desert, together with a
few task-masters, who were to set them to work in the open wilderness;
and with the military, who were to keep them from revolt. The
consequences of this strange assemblage were vice, immorality, frightful
disease, hunger, dreadful mortality among the settlers; the convicts
were decimated by pestilence on the voyage, and again decimated by
famine on their arrival; and the most hideous cruelty was practised
towards the unfortunate natives. Such is the early history of New South
Wales.

After sentence of transportation has been passed, convicts are sent to
the hulks or gaols, where they remain till the period of their departure
arrives. On board convict vessels the convicts are under the sole
control of the surgeon-superintendent, who is furnished with
instructions, as to his conduct, from the Admiralty. The precautions
which have been taken against disease, and the better discipline now
preserved in these ships, have applied an effectual remedy to the
physical evils of the long voyage to Australia, and prevented the
mortality amongst the prisoners which prevailed to a fearful extent
during the earlier periods of transportation. Little diminution,
however, has taken place in those moral evils, which seem to be the
necessary consequences of the close contact and communication between so
many criminals, both during the period of confinement