Mr. Marsden likewise urged upon the home administration the necessity of a female Penitentiary; and obtained a promise that a building should be provided. That he was deeply alive to the importance of an institution of this kind, is manifest in his own description of the state of the female prisoners in the earlier years of the colony, and the deplorable picture he draws of their immorality and wretchedness. "When I returned to England in 1807," he says, "there were upwards of fourteen hundred women in the colony; more than one thousand were unmarried, and nearly all convicts: many of them were exposed to the most dangerous temptations, privations and sufferings; and no suitable asylum had been provided for the female convicts since the establishment of the colony. On my arrival in London in 1808, I drew up two memorials on their behalf, stating how much they suffered from want of a proper barrack--a building for their reception. One of these memorials I presented to the under secretary of state, and the other to his grace the archbishop of Canterbury. They both expressed their readiness to promote the object." Years, however, passed before the consent of the colonial governor could be gained; and Mr. Marsden's benevolent exertions on behalf of these outcast women were for some time frustrated. The variety of his engagements at this time was equal to their importance. He had returned home charged with an almost infinite multiplicity of business. He was the agent of almost every poor person in the colony who had, or thought he had, important business at home. Penny-postages lay in the same dim future with electric telegraphs and steam-frigates, and he was often burdened with letters from Ireland and other remote parts (so wrote a friend, who published at the time a sketch of his proceedings in the "Eclectic Review,") the postage of which, for a single day, has amounted to a guinea; which he cheerfully paid, from the feeling that, although many of these letters were of no use whatever, they were written with a good intention, and under a belief that they were of real value. He had already been saluted, like the Roman generals of old, with the title of common father of his adopted country; and one of his last acts before he quitted England, was to procure, by public contributions and donations of books, "what he called a lending library" (so writes the reviewer,[G] and the expression seems to have amused him from its novelty), "consisting of books on religion, morals, mechanics, agriculture, and general history, to be lent out under his own control and that of his colleagues, to soldiers, free settlers, convicts, and others who had time to read." In this, too, he succeeded, and took over with him a library of the value of between three and four hundred pounds. [G] Eclectic Review, vol. v. pp. 988-995.