In the present condition of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, with so large a proportion of their population in bondage, and such slender means of moral improvement and religious instruction provided for them by the mother country, it would be unreasonable to hope that the convict population can be otherwise than very bad. There may be many exceptions; and at the end of all things here below, it may be found that some of those poor outcasts, and some of the men who have cast them forth to perish, and now despise them, may fill, respectively, the places of the Publican and Pharisee in our Lord's parable; the convict may leave the throne of judgment justified rather than his master; the poor repentant criminal may be pardoned, while the proud one,--the self-sufficiency of the nation, by which he was transported, and left without further care,--may be condemned. Still, however, the general character of the convicts is undoubtedly bad; and the various modes of deceit and dishonesty practised upon their masters, the love of gambling, of strong liquors, and of every kind of licentiousness prevailing in the penal colonies, would fill a volume of equal size and interest with that which is said to be a favourite book in New South Wales,--the Newgate Calendar. Those that are curious upon these subjects may be referred to the thick volume in blue cover, which contains an account of the labours of the Committee upon Transportation, 1837; but when the evidence therein contained is read, it must be with some grains of allowance; the avowed object of Sir W. Molesworth's motion for the committee, was enmity against the whole system of transportation; and a large majority of those that sat in the committee were, it is believed, of his opinion; at all events, they belonged to his party in politics. So that, before justice can be done to the real state of the convicts, we want to have evidence of an opposite tendency, like that of Mr. Potter Macqueen, already quoted; and before the question, whether transportation is a desirable mode of punishing, or a likely means of reforming criminals, can be fairly decided, inquiry must be made, not respecting what _has been done_, but respecting what _might have been done_, or _may even yet be done_, in our penal colonies.