In order that your Grace should have the earliest opportunity of taking into consideration the subject I am about to introduce, I could have wished to have been enabled to communicate it immediately.

To come without further preface to the point in question, I have to inform your Grace that the Irish convicts are become so turbulent, so dissatisfied with their situation here, so extremely insolent, refractory, and troublesome, that, without the most rigid and severe treatment it is impossible for us to receive any labour whatever from them.  Your Grace will see the inconvenience which so large a proportion of that ignorant, obstinate, and depraved set of transports occasion in this country by what I now state, and which has taken place since I wrote my letter No. 30, herewith forwarded.

In addition to their natural vicious propensities they have conceived an opinion that there is a colony of white people in some part of this country in which they will receive all the comforts of life without the necessity of labour.  They have lately taken away two of our breeding mares to carry them towards that part of the country and have made several attempts to possess themselves of others.  This, my Lord, is a serious inconvenience to the colony.  The loss of any part of our small stock of these useful animals is a matter of peculiar concern.

A correspondence, it seems, has been carried on by these people from one district to another, and plans have been projected for their escaping from the colony, and a few have attempted by land, as well as by water, and for the want of our having earlier information they have succeeded.  I have found it necessary to divide them as much as possible, to prevent such schemes being formed; but by this separation they have a better opportunity of irritating and inflaming the minds of those convicts who before such acquaintance have been found of better disposition.

Having already mentioned in my letter, No. 30, the escape of those who had taken away two of our boats, and the disappointment of another gang, and similar attempt, I have now to inform your Grace of a far more numerous gang, who had provided what they thought necessary for their expedition, had fixed upon the place of general rendezvous, and were furnished with a paper of written instructions how they were to travel in point of direction from hence to this fancied paradise, or to China.  This paper of directions will warrant my suspicion that some wicked and disaffected person or persons lurk somewhere in this colony, and I have done all in my power to discover them, but hitherto without success.  Having received early information of the intention of this party, who were said to have increased to about sixty, I planted a party of armed constables, on whose vigilance I could depend, and they secured a gang of these Defenders of about twenty and brought them to prison.  The next day I spoke to them, but observing a considerable degree of obstinacy