"Owing to the high price of victualling, the demand for shipping and risque of capture, or the price of insurance, the contract for conveying the last convicts from Great Britain, and Ireland, to Botany Bay, was £80 per man; and the expence exceeding all the good that could arise to either country, from the banishment, or the evil that could arise from the continuance in either country, of the miscreants. "It is a known fact, that so far are the miscreants, who usually come under sentence of transportation, from considering it a punishment, that they laugh at the joke, and consider it a very great benefit.--Adventurous spirits like those, averse to all manner of industry, insensible to ignominy, and totally unconscious of any such feelings as the _amor patriæ_, delight in nothing more, than shifting the scene, and being conveyed to a distant country, from that in which they have no hope of existing, but at the perpetual risk of the gallows. "It is more than probable that severe flagellation, such as military codes prescribe, would prove infinitely more formidable in detering villainy: and it is, at least, worth the experiment of a statute, which costs nothing, to try whether the penalty of 500, or 1000 lashes, which would not cost the country one shilling, would not prove a stronger barrier against larcenies, and clergyable felonies, than transportation to Botany Bay, at the enormous expense of £60 or 80 per man, which operates in reality as a heavy penalty on the Republic of honest men, and a bounty on villainy. Besides, have we not copper mines, coal mines, canals, and other such places of employment, at home, for those criminals, which, at present, alienate the husbandmen, and honest labourers of the country, from the business of agriculture. The labour of criminals, in this way, would prove a benefit to the country, and some compensation to the State, their crimes had injured."--(_Times, Sept. 9, 1795._) * * * * * "The _Calamities of War_. Amongst the distresses it has occasioned, it is a lamentable fact, that _five Attornies_ have been deprived of an honest livelihood, and have actually entered as foremast men, on board a frigate in the Thames."--(_Times, Nov. 2, 1795._) * * * * * "The Lord Chancellor was occupied on Friday, and Saturday, with hearing an important cause. Earl Pomfret _v._ Sir Ch. Turner. "It respects a very valuable lead mine, in the vale of Arkinghall, Yorkshire. Such is the expedition of our laws, that this cause has lasted _only ninety three years_, being first instituted in the year 1703!!!"--(_Times, Apr. 12, 1796._) * * * * * "The King _v._ Middleton.