rhaps, partly founded on their fears, or stated for
effect; but not wholly unsupported by analogy.

While some exhibit a convict colony as depraved beyond all examples of
depravation, others lower the standard of human virtue, and not only
extenuate its evils but magnify its worth. It was asserted by Lord
Stanley, that the feeling of caste guarded the habits of the free. A
view so flattering to human pride could hardly fail to be confessed;
but, in fact, familiarity with crime, although it may not corrupt the
judgment, must abate the moral sensibility. No colonist can forget his
shudder at the first spectacle of men in chains: none can be unconscious
that the lapse of years has deadened the sense of social disorder. It
has, indeed, made many doubly circumspect, and awakened a peculiar
interest in the ordinances of religion. Nor is it to be doubted that
many expirees, disgusted with the enormities of vice, have, under the
same feeling, contributed to set up the indispensable land-marks of
honesty and religion.

Never were families guarded with more care, or efforts to educate the
population more earnest, than during the inundation of the probation
system. The external decorum of the Sabbath, the general attendance of
the free inhabitants on worship, would go far to countenance the idea
that the place of peril is the place of caution and prayer.

Ministers of the crown are, or profess to be, astonished that when the
freed population increases, and the territory is explored, a country,
still needing labor, should object to the prisoner supply; but the
slave-holding interest expires, when immense numbers can be held no
longer by a few: the common views of mankind re-assert their ascendancy.
All, save employers, are hostile to degraded labor; employers themselves
become less interested as masters than as colonists.

But transportation to one country cannot continue for ever. The causes
which suggest the exile of offenders will occasion their rejection:
money or labor may bribe the settler to become an overseer for the
crown; but from the beginning he will calculate on a nobler vocation. A
considerable community cannot be tempted by convict labor: and the
numbers who regain liberty are enemies to the social state they have
escaped. Fathers, who for themselves dreaded no dangers, tremble for
their children: the adventurer becomes a citizen; a merchant, a
politician: and the time approaches, when the same causes which induce