to effect their reformation.  How then is this great philanthropic end to be best attained?  Is it by holding out no inducements to good conduct, no distinction between repentant vice and incorrigible enormity?  Those who have been convicted of the higher order of offences, and have been in consequence transported for life, are from the very nature of their sentences precluded from ever enjoying the privilege in question, unless, indeed, their very exemplary conduct subsequently induce the governor to extend to them the benefit of the king’s pardon.  This, however, is an indulgence at present so rarely accorded, that the whole of this class may be in a manner considered as being without the pale of citizenship; and it is therefore such only as have been convicted of crimes to which the law has annexed the minor penalties of seven or fourteen years transportation, who could generally become candidates for a seat in the legislative assembly?  How many of this description have been detected in their first offence, in their very offset in the career of criminality?  How many ever afterwards deplore their errors in sackcloth and ashes, and conduct themselves in the most correct and unexceptionable manner?  And shall no distinction be made between them and the still persevering offender whom no inducements can withhold, no punishments deter from the commission of fresh enormities?  Shall the novice in crime and the veteran be placed on the same footing and held in equal estimation?  To what end do they profess themselves to be Christians who can maintain such infernal doctrines?  How can they reconcile them with that universal charity and good will inculcated in their religion?  How can they themselves expect pardon of their God, who would thus withhold oblivion from their repentant fellow creatures?  If it be then alike conformable to the principles of Christianity and sound policy, to make a discrimination between the reformed sinner, and the still hardened and abandoned profligate, what incentive to good conduct would prove so efficacious as the prospect of regaining, after years of unimpeachable integrity, all those civil rights which they had forfeited, of becoming once more privileged to act as jurymen, magistrates, and legislators?  Such a possibility would quickly revive the latent sparks of virtue wherever they were not quite extinct, and electrify the mind when all other applications would fail to rouse it from its despondence and lethargy.  And shall not this sole efficacious remedy be administered, because a set of interlopers, persons in no wise connected with the purposes for which this colony was founded, wish to monopolize all the respectable offices of the government, all the functions of emolument, power, and dignity to themselves?  Shall the vital interests of the whole community sink before the ambitious projects of a few designing individuals, who have no object in view, but their own personal aggrandizement,