"The number of executions in New South Wales in the year 1830 exceeded the whole number of executions in England and Wales, in the same year; which, taking the proportion of the populations of the countries, makes capital punishments upwards of three hundred and twenty-five times as frequent as in the mother country. This horrid fact is pretty well, of itself, an answer to all argument drawn from the idea of Reformation. But direct testimony is abundant. Major McArthur, the son of one of the wealthiest and most extensive settlers in the colony, and to whom it owes so much for its present progress in production and commerce, states, 'It is painful to know that those whose sentences have expired, or to whom pardons have been granted, seldom or ever incline to reform, even when they have acquired property. Intoxication and fraud are habitual to them; and hardly six persons can be named throughout the colony, who, being educated men, and having been transported for felonies, have afterwards become sober, moral, and industrious members of the community. Crime is of constant occurrence, and so completely organized, that cattle are carried off from the settlers in large numbers, and slaughtered for the traders in Sydney, who contract with the commissariat. It is not, therefore, the vicious habits alone of the town which are to be dreaded, but the effects that are communicated and felt throughout the country. The agricultural labourer is encouraged to plunder his master, by finding a ready sale for the property he steals, and whenever his occupations call him to the towns, he sees and yields himself to the vicious habits around him. He returns intoxicated and unsettled to his employer's farm, and incites his comrades to the same sensual indulgences, with equal disregard of the risk and the consequences. To these causes the present vitiated and disorganized state of the convicts in New South Wales is chiefly attributable; and the extent of the evil maybe in some degree estimated, when it is stated _that the expense of the police establishment amounts to more_ than 20,000_l_. per annum for a population of 40,000 souls." _Foreign Quarterly Review._ * * * * * THE GATHERER _Premiers._--The following list of premiers, from the accession of George III. to 1832, with the number of peers created during their respective premierships, may be acceptable at the present period:--Lord Chatham, 9; Lord Bute, 9; George Grenville, 4; Lord Rockingham, 4; Duke of Grafton, none; Lord North, 27; Lord Shelburn, none; Mr. Fox, 7; Mr. Pitt, 90; Mr. Addington, 24; Lord Grenville, 3; Duke of Portland, 4; Mr. Perceval, none; Lord Liverpool, 50; Mr. Canning, 7; Lord Goderich, 6; Duke of Wellington, 2; and Earl Grey, 25.--W.G.C.