HONORED MADAM,

Having learned from the public papers, as well as from my friends in England, the lively interest you have taken in promoting the temporal and eternal welfare of those unhappy females who fall under the sentence of the law, I am induced to address a few lines to you respecting such as visit our distant shores.  It may be gratifying to you, Madam, to hear that I meet with those wretched exiles, who have shared your attentions, and who mention your maternal care with gratitude and affection.  From the measures you have adopted, and the lively interest you have excited in the public feeling, on the behalf of these miserable victims of vice and woe, I now hope the period is not very distant when their miseries will be in some degree alleviated.  I have been striving for more than twenty years to obtain for them some relief, but hitherto have done them little good.  It has not been in my power to move those in authority to pay much attention to their wants and miseries.  I have often been urged in my own mind, to make an appeal to the British nation, and to lay their case before the public.

In the year 1807, I returned to Europe.  Shortly after my arrival in London, I stated in a memorial to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury the miserable situation of the female convicts, to His Majesty’s Government at the Colonial Office, and to several members of the House of Commons.  From the assurances that were then made, that barracks should be built for the accommodation of the female convicts, I entertained no doubt but that the Government would have given instructions to the Governor to make some provisions for them.  On my return to the colony, in 1810, I found things in the same state I left them; five years after my again arriving in the colony, I took the liberty to speak to the Governor, as opportunity afforded, on the subject in question, and was surprised to learn that no instructions had been communicated to His Excellency from His Majesty’s Government, after what had passed between me and those in authority at home, relative to the state of the female convicts.  At length I resolved to make an official statement of their miserable situation to the Governor, and, if the Governor did not feel himself authorized to build a barrack for them, to transmit my memorial to my friends in England, with His Excellency’s answer, as a ground for them to renew my former application to Government for some relief.  Accordingly, I forwarded my memorial, with a copy of the Governor’s answer, home to more than one of my friends.  I have never been convinced that no instructions were given by His Majesty’s Government to provide barracks for the female convicts; on the contrary, my mind is strongly impressed in that instructions were given; if they were not, I can only say that this was a great omission, after the promises that were made.  I was not ignorant that the sending home of my letter to the Governor and his answer,