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1 to 17. The proportion at present I believe to be about 1 to 70, or thereabouts.

As the number of convicts decreases, and stations, the officers employed at those stations may be appointed to others with the view of carrying out eventually the proportion to 1 to 25 or 1 to 30, as the minimum to be allowed looking to a proper supervision. Should there not be a sufficient number of properly qualified men in the different gangs at present existing. I beg to submit that it would be in every way better to employ non-commissioned officers of Sappers and Artillery to fill the subordinate stations than to pick out men from among the officers of the jails and penitentiaries of the country. These non-commissioned officers have been accustomed to discipline; they are men of good character, as their position intimates: they are well educated, and they will be gene- rally capable of superintending the works upon which the convicts will be employed; and lastly, there is a guarantee for their good behaviour in the possession of a pension which may be forfeited by misconduct.

I have not said anything as yet as to the Female Convicts. This however becomes a subject of much importance when it is considered that the tendency to unnatural crime, fostered as it must be when numbers of one sex are congregated together, though checked by material obstacles, will in all probability break out when the convict is released from control, and seek its indulgence, unless some opportunity for legitimate sexual intercourse.

I should therefore propose that all the female convicts should be sent to Van Diemen's Land; that proper buildings should be erected to con- tain them; that a strict system of Separation should be adopted at first with them as with the male convicts, and that this should gradually be relaxed, going from the Separate to the Silent System, and from that to a more unrestricted intercourse, paying every attention to their moral and religious instruction, and also to their education in such matters as may be of use to them in an industrial point of view, so that at the end of the term of their sentence they may be in some measure fitted to become wives and mothers of families. And every inducement should be held out It to them to form legitimate connections with unmarried convicts. would also be desirable in all cases that the wives and families of convicts Inducements might be held out to should be sent out to join them. parishes to pay for the passage of such persons; and assistance might be given by Government, by finding passages for them on board convict ships, charging only for their subsistence,

With regard to the Colony of North Australia, the settlement of which may carry off a portion of the redundant convict population of Van Diemen's Land, I should only submit that care be taken to maintain something approaching to an equality in the number of males and females sent there. Male convicts who have formed legitimate connections, either with female convicts or emigrants; or men whose wives and children have been forwarded from England to join them in Australia, may be sent to this colony, but unless under peculiar circumstances, no unmarried male convict should be allowed to settle there.

[The suggestions, contained in the preceding letter were, with some modifications, embodied in the following instructions.]

Sir,

No. 2.

Earl Grey to Sir William Denison.

Downing Street, September 30, 1846. IN obedience to Her Majesty's commands, I transmit to you the accompanying warrant under the royal sign manual, appointing you to be Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land and its dependencies. You will enter on that Government at a period when the great interests thus confided to your care have become the subject of no common solici- tude. This remark applies more especially to the state of that large assemblage of transported convicts, amounting to little short of 30,000, who yet inhabit the colony in a penal condition. Your attention (as I am well aware) has been carefully bestowed on the whole of the correspondence which during several years past has taken place on this subject between the successive Governors of Van Diemen's Land and my predecessors in this office, as well as on the evidence received and the Report made by the House of Commons' Committee on Trans- portation, of the years 1837 and 1838; I am therefore relieved from the necessity of recapitulating the substance of those documents, or of enter- ing into any narrative of past occurrences. The more fit occasion for taking such a retrospect will have arrived whenever I shall be able to explain to you the views of Her Majesty's Government, and the decision of Parliament, as to the whole system of Transportation. That time is not, I trust, remote. Till then I propose to confine the instructions I have to address to you to the course to be pursued with respect to the convicts who are actually congregated in the colony, or who may hereafter arrive there. In what I am about to write, I presuppose your complete acquaintance with all the official instructions which have already been written, and with all the official reports which have already been made on that subject. But in order to render my intentions as clear as possible, I shall commence by giving a brief abstract of the system at present in operation, and of the consequences which have resulted from it.

The system of convict discipline as detailed in Lord Stanley's des- patches, and as subsequently modified by the despatches of Mr. Gladstone, may be said to consist of the following main regulations :—

1st. There is in the case of each convict to be a period of constraint and compulsory labour, varying in duration according to the length of the sentence, but defined and certain.

2nd. There is to be a period during which the convict is subject to less restraint, is allowed to hire himself out to any one who is willing to employ him, but is still subject to controul, and liable on any serious offence to have this indulgence withdrawn. The length of time passed in this stage is made to depend upon the behaviour of the convict; and if this be exemplary, he is to be recommended for advancement into the next stage.

3rd. When the convict receives a ticket of leave he becomes entitled to move about to any part of the island, to employ himself in any manner he may choose, and to possess property; but he is liable to the with- drawal of the ticket of leave in case he commits any serious offence.

4th. If the convict be the holder of a ticket of leave for a certain time he is to be recommended for a conditional pardon. ` Such a pardon restores him to all the rights and powers of a free man, and he may betake himself

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