Of a truth, Norfolk Island was a government that could not be entrusted to any but iron hands. That this commandant was clearly the wrong man for the post cannot be questioned; nevertheless, he was not altogether to blame for the terrible state of affairs existing. No doubt by his wavering incompetence the original condition of the island was greatly aggravated, but all these evils which presently broke out and bore such noxious fruit, had been germinating long before his time. It had been the custom for many years to treat the convicts with ill-advised leniency. They had been allowed practically too much indulgence, and were permitted to forget that they owed their location on that island solely to their own grievous crimes and offences. They had been kept in order by concession, and not by stern force; persuaded to be good, rather than coerced when bad. Such a method of procedure can but have one result with criminals. It is viewed by them as weakness of which they are quick to take every advantage. Here, at Norfolk Island, under a loose régime, the convicts had always been allowed their own way; half the officers placed over them trafficked with them, and were their free-and-easy familiar friends. On the introduction of the new system, no attempt was made to sweep the place clean before the arrival of greatly increased numbers. Old officers remained, and old convicts; enough of both to perpetuate the old evils and to render them twice as harmful under the new aspect of the settlement. Gardens were still allowed; great freedom to come and go hither and thither, with no strict observance of bounds; any number of private shops existed whereat the convicts bought and sold, or bartered with each other for pork and vegetables and other articles of general use. Worse than this, the "Ring" was left untouched, and grew daily more and more powerful, till a band of some forty or fifty cut-throat scoundrels ruled the whole convictdom of the settlement. The members of this "Ring" were in league with the cooks, from whom they obtained the best portions of the food, abstracted from their fellow-prisoners' rations; but no one dared to complain. Such was the malignant terrorism inspired by these fifty ruffians, that they kept the whole body of the convicts in awe, and their wholesale plunderings and pilferings flourished unchecked long before any attempt was made to put them down. Under such conditions as these, the management of the convicts in Norfolk Island was certainly a disgrace to the authorities.