The advent of Maconochie created vast excitement among the unfortunate beings. The active efforts of this officer altered the tone of the settlement, and inspired the desponding with hope: they changed the aspect of that abode of misery--where suffering, insurgency, and carnage, had furnished a dark page in penal history. True to his creed, he removed the permanent gallows, which met the eyes of the prisoners as they left their barracks for their morning toil, and abolished the doubly-loaded cats, which had been heretofore the instruments of punishment. The impulse was powerful: a new tone of command, humane even to tenderness; the promise of speedy deliverance, wrought on the minds of the prisoners with the force of novelty and surprise. The gaol doors were thrown open: the gaoler loitered before the deserted prison, and the prisoners yielded to the spell of a transient enchantment. On his arrival, Maconochie issued an "exposition" of his plan: he told the prisoners that punishment would be inflicted, to inspire the thoughtless with reflection and the guilty with repentance. Such would be its object, and such its limits. He exhorted them to a manly endurance and a diligent preparation to acquire the comforts of _honest_ bread. He assured them, that while the escape of the incorrigible would be barred for ever, he would delight to hasten the freedom of the worthy. Thus those that earned 6,000 marks would discharge a seven years' sentence, or 7,000 would be required for ten years' servitude; and 8,000 was the composition proposed for a sentence for life. They were, however, to enjoy a portion of their earnings, which they paid in exchange for luxuries, or to reserve the whole to hasten their discharge. Thus it was possible to obtain a ticket-of-leave in one, two, or two and a-half years, from a sentence of seven, ten years, or life. He deprecated those lengthened punishments, which deprive men of the years of youth, and strengthen and ripen every evil propensity into fatal maturity. While the government of Norfolk Island developed the novel system, accounts were conveyed to the colonies only at intervals: some in the spirit of hostility, and others because they were idle, delighted to depict the enthusiastic Maconochie as the subject of delusion, and the butt of ridicule among those he reformed; but the climax at last came.