some capital felony; and even in this latter case they frequently inflict some summary punishment.  With respect to the first of these summary modes of punishment, transportation to the Coal River, it has already been stated that the population of this settlement amounted in the year 1817, to five hundred and fifty souls:  of these not more than one hundred, including the civil and military establishments, and the settlers and their families on the upper banks of the river, were free.  The remaining four hundred and fifty, therefore, were persons who had been convicted of crimes either by the criminal court or by the magistracy, and retransported thither for various periods.  Those few, it has been seen, who are condemned to this punishment by the criminal court, are for the most part sentenced to long terms of transportation; but as nine-tenths of the criminals at this settlement are sent thither either by the benches of magistrates, or by the superintendent of police, who seldom transport for a longer period than two years, and more frequently for one year, or six months, the population may at a very moderate calculation be considered as undergoing a complete change every two years, or in other words, it may be concluded that two hundred and twenty-five persons are annually transported thither by way of punishment.  We must therefore add this number to the culprits convicted before the court of criminal judicature, and we shall then have a total of three hundred and eighteen persons annually convicted of crimes in the colony.  This is of itself an alarming sum of criminality; but we must not stop here, since it only conducts us to the second of the summary modes of punishment which I have enumerated; viz. the gaol gangs.  There are upon an average about fifty persons in the gaol gang at Sydney, and about the same number in the gaol gangs belonging to the other towns and districts in the colony.  These are criminals convicted of smaller offences than those who are transported to the Coal River; they are worked from sunrise to sun-set, and are locked up in the prisons during the night.  This mode of punishment is seldom inflicted for a longer term than four months.  It may therefore be safely computed that these gaol gangs are changed once in this period, or in other words, that three hundred persons annually pass through this ordeal.  This further addition to the formidable catalogue of crimes already made out, increases the total to six hundred and eighteen persons, yet only leads us to the third mode of summary punishment, viz. labour at the factory at Paramatta.  The number of women sentenced to this mode of punishment may be averaged at one hundred and fifty, and as the average term of their sentences does not exceed six months, we have a farther number of three hundred to add to the above estimate.  This increases it to nine hundred and eighteen persons; but we have still one other mode of punishment in petto, corporal punishment