would subject me to the censure as well as the displeasure of my superiors.  I informed some of my friends in England, as well as in the colony, that if no attention was paid to the female convicts, I was determined to lay their case before the British nation; and then I was certain, from the moral and religious feeling which pervades all ranks, that redress would be obtained.  However, nothing has been done yet to remedy the evils of which I complain.  For the last five and twenty years many of the convict women have been driven to vice to obtain a loaf of bread, or a bed to lie upon.  To this day there never has been a place to put the female convicts in when they land from the ships.  Many of the women have told me with tears their distress of mind on this account; some would have been glad to have returned to the paths of virtue if they could have found a hut to live in without forming improper connections.  Some of these women, when they have been brought before the magistrate, and I have remonstrated with them for their crime, have replied, “I have no other means of living; I am compelled to give my weekly allowance of provisions for my lodgings, and I must starve or live in vice.”  I was well aware that this statement was correct, and was often at a loss what to answer.  It is not only the calamities that these wretched women and their children suffer that are to be regretted, but the general corruption of morals that such a system establishes in this rising colony, and the ruin their example spreads through all the settlements.  The male convicts in the service of the Crown, or in that of individuals, are tempted to rob and plunder continually, to supply the urgent necessities of those women.

All the female convicts have not run the same lengths in vice.  All are not equally hardened in crime, and it is most dreadful that all should alike, on their arrival here, be liable and exposed to the same dangerous temptations, without any remedy.  I rejoice, Madam, that you reside near the seat of Government, and may have it in your power to call the attention of His Majesty’s Ministers to this important subject—­a subject in which the entire welfare of these settlements is involved.  If proper care be taken of the women, the colony will prosper, and the expenses of the mother-country will be reduced.  On the contrary, if the morals of the female convicts are wholly neglected, as they have been hitherto, the colony will be only a nursery for crime....

Your good intentions and benevolent labors will all be abortive if the exiled females, on their arrival in the colony, are plunged into every ruinous temptation and sort of vice—­which will ever be the case till some barrack is provided for them.  Great evils in a state cannot soon be remedied....  I believe the Governor has got instructions from home to provide accommodation for the female convicts, and I hope in two or three years to see them lodged in a comfortable