and the like undertakings. It is scarcely to be supposed that employment of this kind, when the men must necessarily work in gangs, is so favourable for their moral improvement and reformation as residence in a private family and occupation in rural pursuits is generally likely to prove; though the contrary notion is supported in the recent Report of the Transportation Committee, since, in the former case, they are under stricter discipline. However, it has always been customary to make the public works a sort of punishment, and private service a reward for convicts; and those that have been returned from the latter with complaints, are usually put upon the roads for at least six months; so that, if this system really stands in the way of the improvement of offenders, it keeps those that conduct themselves well from the beginning quite clear of the bad example of less hopeful characters. It is a sad truth, however, in Australia, as it often is found to be in England, that "the most skilful mechanics are generally the worst behaved and most drunken," and, consequently, most liable to punishment in the public gangs. [190] See Mr. Montgomery Martin's New South Wales for further particulars on this subject, pp. 168-177. By way of introducing the reader to the kind of life led by those unhappy beings who labour in Australia at the public roads, and to give him also some idea of the spiritual work which the ministers of Christ's Church in a penal colony may be called upon to perform, the following sketch from a private letter will be not unacceptable:--"In a few minutes I am at the stockade where more than 60 men are immediately mustered; the [Roman] 'Catholics'[191] are sent back to their boxes, the 'Protestants' assemble under a shed, open on two sides, and filled with a few coarse boards for tables and forms, where the men get their meals. Their boxes are wooden buildings of uniform structure, in which the prisoners are locked up from _sundown_ to sunrise. The roof is shingled, the sides are weather-board, the door in the middle is secured by a padlock, and above the door is a grating to admit the light and air, a similar grating being placed exactly opposite to it. The internal arrangements are simple in the extreme, where you see a gangway in the middle, and two tiers of hard planks or dressers for the men to lie upon; their bedding being, I believe, only a blanket. As there is no division to form separate bed-places, the four-and-twenty or thirty men who share these boxes lie like the pigs, and make the best of it they can. When a prisoner has served his time in irons, he is removed to a probationary gang; that which I am describing is an ironed gang. These men are dressed in a motley suit of grey and yellow alternately, each seam being of a different colour; and the irons being secured to each ancle, and, for the relief of the wearer, made fast from the legs to the waist. The whole stockade is sometimes enclosed with high palings, and