o become settlers, with the usual
indulgences, and thus have the means once again placed before
them of raising themselves to a respectable rank in society, in
that country to which they had been banished. Those, on the other
hand, who are found to be dissolute and abandoned characters when
their term of labour had expired, might be made free also; but,
instead of being allowed to become settlers and to receive
indulgences, they might be taken off the stores, and be compelled
to labour for their daily bread. Such an amelioration of the
punishment of those unhappy delinquents who have incurred this
heavy vengeance of the laws of their country, would induce
numbers to look forward into futurity with a satisfaction which
they had not possessed previously, arising out of the distant
hope of becoming opulent and respectable, and of making the
renewal, in the decline of their existence, of those prospects
which, in their earlier years, had been eluded and destroyed by
their vices; and this idea would not fail to stimulate them to a
conduct more laudable, and calculated to accelerate the
accomplishment of their wishes. It may be brought against this
measure, as an argument, that it would reduce the extent of the
power of government to grant pardons to deserving convicts, and
that government would thus lose the advantage which was derived
from the labour of those prisoners; but to the former objection
it may be replied, that the certainty of an alleviation, and of
the advantages which would attend a meritorious conduct during
the specified period of punishment, would prove a powerful
incentive to the convicts, and would tend to produce more good
members of society and useful settlers than could be expected,
unless some reward was to be the certain result of meritorious
conduct; without this stimulus, there might be, as there has
been, some good characters to reward, but their numbers would be
comparatively insignificant: To the latter objection it will only
be necessary to say, that if government loses the labour of these
convicts, it also disburdens itself of the weight of supporting
them and of providing them clothing, etc.

Against the perpetual imprisonment of convicts the following
reasons may be brought forward:--The restlessness and
indifference which generally pervade the conduct of delinquents
of this description, who, seeing no termination to their
captivity, lose the inclination to labour, if they ever possessed