service of an officer, have none to recommend them, and remain,
consequently, unnoticed, although they may be more meritorious
than even some who are emancipated; and the numerous desertions
which take place amongst those convicts who have no prospect of
amelioration in view, and who are, therefore, indifferent what
becomes of them, placing upon a level the dangers of destruction
and the prospect of toiling away existence, without the hope of
freedom or of happiness, to the close of their days. Such a
conduct as this is truly not to be wondered at, when the
behaviour of some criminals at the bar of their country is
recalled to mind, where they have declined that mercy which has
been extended to them, and preferred death to a perpetual
banishment from that society which they had injured. If any of
the liberated convicts should afterwards attempt to make their
escape from the colony, they might be returned to the public
labour, or be sentenced to such other punishment as may be
thought adequate to the importance of their offence. What the
consequence of the amelioration of the rigour of punishment would
be may easily be imagined; instead of continually murmuring at
the gloomy prospect before them--of displaying indifference to
the future--of beholding before them no limitation of their
slavery, nothing but misery, toil, and death; instead of these
cheerless contemplations, they would begin to display a degree of
contentedness with the situation to which their delinquency had
reduced them, and their progress would be marked by utility to
the government and to the community, instead of being chequered
by continual efforts to elude the vigilance of their overseers,
and to escape from a scene of uniform hardships, unillumined by a
single ray of hope.