Allotted season
be permitted to illumine and transfuse into these desert regions,
knowledge, virtue and happiness.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Observations on the Convicts.
A short account of that class of men for whose disposal and advantage
the colony was principally, if not totally, founded, seems necessary.
If it be recollected how large a body of these people are now congregated
in the settlement of Port Jackson and at Norfolk Island, it will, I think,
not only excite surprise but afford satisfaction, to learn, that in a
period of four years few crimes of a deep dye or of a hardened nature
have been perpetrated. Murder and unnatural sins rank not hitherto in the
catalogue of their enormities, and one suicide only has been committed.
To the honour of the female part of our community let it be recorded
that only one woman has suffered capital punishment. On her condemnation
she pleaded pregnancy, and a jury of venerable matrons was impanneled
on the spot, to examine and pronounce her state, which the forewoman,
a grave personage between sixty and seventy years old, did, by this short
address to the court; 'Gentlemen! she is as much with child as I am.'
Sentence was accordingly passed, and she was executed.
Besides the instance of Irving, two other male convicts, William
Bloodsworth, of Kingston upon Thames, and John Arscott, of Truro,
in Cornwall, were both emancipated for their good conduct, in the years
1790 and 1791.
