Urged by appeals like these, which no heart could well resist, Judge Burton reprieved the convicted prisoners, until the whole case should be laid before the government, and at least religious consolation and assistance might be obtained for those who were to suffer capital punishment. Eleven of the prisoners were afterwards executed, but not without having been visited by ministers of religion, who were sent for that express purpose from Sydney. The kind and christian judge exerted himself in behalf of the outcast population of Norfolk Island, "that modern Gomorrah," as it has been called; and, as usual, improvement in bodily comforts or morals was much more willingly undertaken by those in authority than spiritual reformation. His advice respecting the propriety of diminishing the number of prisoners confined together was speedily attended to. His efforts to procure religious reproof, instruction, and consolation were not so soon successful; they were, however, nobly continued, and at length both Protestant and Roman Catholic chaplains were appointed to the island. But this great object was not gained without _giving offence_. Strange that any party could take offence at efforts of this description, and stranger still that men professing a general regard for religion, and avowedly possessed of consciences exquisitely tender, and of charity unbounded, should, notwithstanding, object to the conscientious and charitable efforts in the cause of religion of which we have just been speaking! However, these impotent struggles have signally failed, and now there are clergy both of the English and Roman Church in Norfolk Island, while the moral condition of the prisoners there is stated to have improved greatly. In 1837 the Rev. Mr. Sharpe was removed thither, at his own request, from Pitt Town in New South Wales, and his labours and ministrations are said to have been useful and effectual. But even here, in this effort to save some of Christ's lost sheep, the unhappy circumstances of our penal colonies were manifested. When Mr. Sharpe was removed to Norfolk Island, a larger and more important sphere of usefulness, his little parish on the Hawkesbury, was for a time left without a pastor. And this distressing trial is frequently occurring; when illness, or death, or removal, deprives a parish of its spiritual shepherd, for a time at least his place is liable to be left vacant, and his people likely to become as sheep going astray. It appears likewise, from the Report of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, that an assistant-chaplain for Norfolk Island was appointed in 1841. There have been two clergymen of the Church of Rome in the island ever since 1838, an arrangement which was alleged to be necessary, in order that the chaplain himself might not be deprived of private confession and absolution.[195] There was no church in the island a few years ago, but a room in one settlement and a barn in the other were the places where