paths of virtue if they could have found a hut to live in
without forming improper connections. Some of these women, when
they have been brought before the magistrate, and I have
remonstrated with them for their crime, have replied, "I have no
other means of living; I am compelled to give my weekly allowance
of provisions for my lodgings, and I must starve or live in vice."
I was well aware that this statement was correct, and was often at
a loss what to answer. It is not only the calamities that these
wretched women and their children suffer that are to be regretted,
but the general corruption of morals that such a system establishes
in this rising colony, and the ruin their example spreads through
all the settlements. The male convicts in the service of the Crown,
or in that of individuals, are tempted to rob and plunder
continually, to supply the urgent necessities of those women.

All the female convicts have not run the same lengths in vice. All
are not equally hardened in crime, and it is most dreadful that all
should alike, on their arrival here, be liable and exposed to the
same dangerous temptations, without any remedy. I rejoice, Madam,
that you reside near the seat of Government, and may have it in
your power to call the attention of His Majesty's Ministers to this
important subject--a subject in which the entire welfare of these
settlements is involved. If proper care be taken of the women, the
colony will prosper, and the expenses of the mother-country will be
reduced. On the contrary, if the morals of the female convicts are
wholly neglected, as they have been hitherto, the colony will be
only a nursery for crime....

Your good intentions and benevolent labors will all be abortive if
the exiled females, on their arrival in the colony, are plunged
into every ruinous temptation and sort of vice--which will ever be
the case till some barrack is provided for them. Great evils in a
state cannot soon be remedied.... I believe the Governor has got
instructions from home to provide accommodation for the female
convicts, and I hope in two or three years to see them lodged in a
comfortable barrack; so that none shall be lost for want of a hut
to lie in. If a communication be kept up on a regular plan between
this colony and London, much good m