however, among the emancipated convicts of property exceptions from this prevalent depravity; rare, indeed, and on that account the more honourable."[199] And numberless, in the earlier history of New South Wales, are the evil consequences which are recorded to have arisen from the necessity which then existed of employing either convicts, or else men recently emancipated, in places of the highest trust and importance. One striking example may suffice; and it is believed that no injustice is done to the class of men now alluded to, when it is stated that the guilty parties were persons belonging to that body. Soon after the departure of Governor Hunter, in 1800, it was discovered that the clerks who were admitted to the registers of the terms of the transportation of the convicts, had altered the sentences of nearly 200 prisoners, on receiving from each a sum equal in value to ten or twelve pounds.[200] Of these examples the early history of the colony is full; but, in later years, it may be hoped, that time, and public opinion, and the tide of emigration, have combined to render the conduct of persons belonging to this class less generally objectionable than it formerly was. The greater portion of the shop-keepers, and what may be called the middling classes in Sydney, were emancipists; and their wealth and influence were so great, that, during the years 1834, 1835, and 1836, one-fourth of the jurors who served in the civil and criminal courts belonged to that body. These persons are often very little educated; and young men possessed of from 1000_l._ to 2000_l._ a-year in stock, can sometimes neither read nor write. Cock-fighting, driving, and badger-baiting, are pursuits that occupy youths of this class very frequently; and a showy, tawdry style of dress, engages the attention of the young women. Certainly, it is not of materials of this kind, that the English constitution would have juries composed; and it is not surprising that so large a proportion of jurors, who have themselves once stood at the bar of justice, should be the means of carrying undue partiality for the guilty into the jurors' box, and also of keeping out of that responsible station all those who can in any way escape its duties.[201] Respectable men will not, if they can avoid it, sit in the same box with men who go in with their minds entirely made up to acquit the guilty, whatever may be the tenor of the evidence to which they have just been listening, whatever the sacredness of the oath they have recently taken. If practical experience is of any real value, then it may safely be pronounced that men, who are scarcely fit to enjoy the privilege of sitting upon juries, are certainly at present unprepared for the introduction of a representative form of legislation and government. The civil juries of New South Wales have held the scales of justice uncommonly even, for they have managed to acquit about 50 per cent. of