soners conducted themselves with exemplary
decorum.

Among those who belong to the class of habitual offenders, a large
proportion are intellectually deficient. These unfortunate beings
regularly return to crime on their discharge; incapable of resisting
temptation: while prisoners, they are perpetually involved in
difficulties. A very bad man will pass through the different stages of
his sentence without reproach, while the weak-minded are involved in
endless infractions of discipline and successive punishments. Nothing
retards the release of the artful villain when his time is expired,
while the warm and incautious, but better man, accumulates a catalogue
of prison penalties.

The most civil and useless prisoners are the Irish: the most base and
clever are the Scotch. They stand in different relations to the law: the
Scotchman violates his own judgment, and offends, against knowledge; the
Irish peasant unites a species of patriotism with his aggressions.

The modern convict is, in some respects, better than his predecessor;
less ruthless, or prone to atrocious violence. Civilisation has extended
its mollifying influence, even to the professional robber. On the other
hand, in former times, men were transported for very trivial offences:
poaching, with its consequences, formed the leading crimes of the
English counties; yet many poachers were otherwise first-rate men, both
in disposition and physical development. The modern convicts are, more
generally, criminals in the popular sense. The abolition of capital
punishments, and the erection of penitentiaries at home, left the
penalty of transportation chiefly to more serious offences.

The tendency to particular crimes is often curiously displayed.
Prisoners are safe amidst scenes which present no allurements adapted to
their former habits: the pickpocket is perfectly trusty as a shepherd;
the housebreaker makes a confidential dairy-man. Old temptations are
fatal: even the stealing particular goods seems a special propensity. A
woman, lately convicted of stealing blankets, who was originally
transported for blanket-stealing, had twice stolen the same article in
the colony. It is, of course, in the same department that the robber,
the coiner, or the receiver of Europe, resumes in Australia his
antagonism to the laws. These characteristics are happily often
obliterated and overpowered.

The Christian will not doubt that reformation is possible, and that many
once negl