The discussions thus originated are of a deeply interesting character, and their influence will long survive the animosity they occasioned. The completion of Maconochie's report was exceedingly rapid, or it was very early commenced. He had resided but three months, when he felt authorised to pronounce the existing system of management defective, far less in application than in principle. The course ascribed to Maconochie was that of a prejudiced spy, seeking evidence for a case pre-judged: that which he claimed, was the task of a philosopher, scanning facts patent to every eye--even more striking when first seen. His conclusions he attributed to the inevitable process by which facts are generalised, and demonstrate systems. His style, when deliberate, is terse and explicit: his ideas he expressed with the utmost freedom; or, as it then seemed, audacity. The colonists he treated as an operator, who indeed pities the sufferings of his patient, but disregards a natural outcry, while expounding in the language of science both the symptoms and the cure. Without circumlocution or reserve, he spoke of the officers concerned in convict management as blinded by habit--as empirics who could patch and cauterise a wound, but were involved in the hopeless prejudices of a topical practice, and much too far gone to comprehend improvements founded on scientific principles. His deviations from the tone of philosophical discussion were not numerous, but they were marked. The chief police magistrate he compared to the lamplighter, by whom gas is detested. In praising that officer's administrative talent, he observed that he belonged to the martinet school, and that his estimate of human nature depressed it below its worth. The representations of Maconochie, with reference to the condition of the convicts and the character of the settlers, awakened a storm of indignation. Transportation, he said, at a distance appeared a trivial penalty; but when surveyed more nearly, it was found to be inhuman. The servant was assigned to a master without his consent; his employment was alien to his habits; he labored without wages; he was met with suspicion, and ruled with insult or contempt. The servant became sullen, the settler vindictive: slight offences were visited with punishments "severe, to excessive cruelty,"--offences, often the ebullitions of wounded feeling, and the tokens of a hopeless wretchedness.