1. Discharged by Proclamations and Gaol-deliveries 8650 2. Discharged by Acquittals 4935 3. Discharged after punishment: or by being bailed or pardoned 6925 ------ Total 20,510 ------ If to this deplorable Catalogue shall be added the Convicts which have been returned on the Public from the Hulks within the same period, namely, from 1792 to 1799 inclusive, either from pardons, escapes, or the expiration of their punishment, the numbers will stand thus: Enlarged in 1792 303 ---- 1793 435 ---- 1794 62 ---- 1795 67 ---- 1796 38 ---- 1797 39 ---- 1798 93 ---- 1799 346 ---- 1383 ------ Total from Gaols and from the Hulks 21,893 Humanity shudders at the contemplation of this interesting part of the discussion, when it is considered, who these our miserable fellow-mortals are! and what is to be expected from the extreme depravity which attaches to the chief part of them! And here a prominent feature of the imperfect state of the Police of the Metropolis and the Country is too evident to escape notice. _Without friends, without character, and without the means of subsistence_, what are these unhappy mortals to do?--They are no sooner known or suspected, than they are avoided.--No person will employ them, even if they were disposed to return to the paths of honesty; unless they make use of fraud and deception, by concealing that they have been the inhabitants of a _Prison_, or of the _Hulks_. At large upon the world, without food or raiment, and with the constant calls of nature upon them for both, without a home or any asylum to shelter them from the inclemency of the weather, _what is to become of them_? The Police of the Country has provided no place of industry, in which those who were disposed to reform might find subsistence in return for voluntary labour; which, in their present situation, becomes useless to them, because no person will purchase it by employing them.[25] Under all these circumstances it is to be feared, indeed it is known, that many Convicts, from dire necessity, return to their old courses.--And thus, through the medium of these miserable outcasts of Society, crimes are increased and become a regular trade, because many of them can make no other election.