of similar extent, it would still appear on the first view to argue well in favour of the reformatory influence of this colony:  since Governor Bligh in his examination before the committee of the House of Commons, in the year 1812, presented a document purporting to be a list of criminals tried between August, 1806, and August, 1807, from which it appears that one hundred and seventeen* persons were arraigned before the criminal court during this interval.  If we were therefore to abide by the records of the criminal court alone, we should draw the most satisfactory conclusions with respect to the progress of reformation in the morals and habits of the people since that period.  The comparison, indeed, between the catalogue of crime in the years 1806 and 1817, would be most gratifying; as notwithstanding that the population of the colony rather more than doubled itself since the former year, the latter presents a decrease in the number of criminals of twenty-five, or in other words, crimes would appear to have diminished in the ratio of about 9/4 to 1.  If the records, therefore, of the criminal court were decisive on the subject, it would be impossible not to confess that the system pursued in this colony has fully answered the humane intentions for which it was founded.  But unhappily these records are no standard by which to judge of the reformatory tendency of the system.  During Governor Bligh’s administration, all offenders except those who were charged with the most trifling misdemeanors, were tried by the criminal court.  He was a second Draco, who considered the smallest offence deserving of death:  and wo to the wretch whom the criminal court doomed to this punishment, for he invariably carried its sentence into execution.  His successor, however, has acted on more merciful principles; and, besides, crimes have so rapidly multiplied of late years, that the judge advocate would not have sufficient time for presiding in the two civil courts of which he is the head, were he obliged to dispose of all the culprits that might be arraigned in the criminal court.  But it is well known to those who are at all conversant with the state of the colony, that but a very small portion of the offences which are committed there, are now brought under the jurisdiction of this court.  The majority of the criminals who are now tried by it are either free persons, or such as have obtained emancipations; i.e. those whom the various governors have made free in the colony, but who are not at liberty to quit it.  The benches of magistrates, and the superintendent of police, are delicate of deciding on charges in which the members of these two free classes are implicated; but they dispose of offenders already under the sentence of the law in a summary manner, either by transporting them to the Coal River, by putting them in the gaol gangs, by sending them (if they happen to be females) to the factory, or by simply ordering them corporal punishment, unless they are charged with murder, or