As to that part of the report which mentions the guard-barracks being the repository for the arms of the guard off duty, and of its standing in the yard to which the hole in the wall would serve as a communication, and of its being a further cause of suspicion and alarm to Captain Shortland--to one acquainted with the situation of the prison, such an idea would be ridiculous; but to those who are not acquainted with it, it will be only necessary for us to mention, that if the prisoners had the intention of breaking out through this passage, and had actually got into the barrack-yard, the difficulties they would then have to encounter would be much greater than to break a passage through the market square, or the back part of the yard. As to the idea of their possessing themselves of the muskets standing in the racks in the guard-barracks (even if they knew of any being there) it is childish; for how easy would it have been for the commanding officer, on the shortest intimation of such an attempt, with one blast of his bugle, to have called all his guards to the spot before a hundredth part of the prisoners could have got into the yard, and by that means instantly put a stop to any further proceedings on their part. We cannot conceive how Mr. King can possibly come forward and say, on these grounds, it appeared to him that Captain Shortland was justified in giving the order for sounding the alarm bell, when, if he found the prisoners were conducting themselves improperly, had he sent for the committee (as always had been his custom heretofore, when he had any charge against the prisoners for improper conduct) and told them that the prisoners were breaking the wall (which circumstance, as has been published before, was not known to one tenth of the prisoners) and requested them to have represented to those engaged in it, the consequences that must ensue if they persisted in such conduct, we have not a moment's hesitation in saying, they would have put a stop to any further proceedings of that kind. That part which relates to the breaking of the iron chain which fastened No. 1 gate, and which follows next in the report, says there was no evidence to show whether it was done before or after the alarm bell rang. As this was a material point on which they grounded Shortland's justification, we have to regret that the evidence we had to lay before the commissioners, and which would, in our opinion, have sufficiently cleared up that point, was not examined.