It has been said that these poor convicts are cruelly ill-used on board the transport ships. I can speak only of what I saw; I know that our Captain was a humane man. I can testify to the fact that there were seldom more than two or three floggings a day, and of the women not so many; I know that our convicts were a gang of hardened wretches whom nothing but the fear of the lash kept in order; I know that when they came on board they were for the most part in a wretched condition; of low habits from long confinement, poor food, and bad drink; that many of them lay down directly the ship got into open water and, what with sea-sickness, fever, and weakness, never got up again. The truth is that the contractors, who receive £5 a head for a voyage which takes about two months, do honestly provide the convicts the rations prescribed by the Government. These rations are sufficient but not luxurious; they consist of beef, pork, biscuits and cheese once a week; to keep up their spirits they are served a ration of gin. The beef may have been tough and the pork rusty, but such as it was the Captain served it out among them. Yet, on the voyage of seven weeks we buried forty-seven, or nearly one every day. It seems a large number; those who died were nearly all men; very few of them were women. They were unfit to face the fatigues of the voyage and the rolling of the ship; some of them were even consumptive; some were asthmatic; some were in fevers; some had other diseases; they died; perhaps they would have died at home in prison. At Newgate scarce a day passes that some poor wretch does not succumb to privation and bad air. If so many of them died on board the ship that is no proof of inhumanity. Let us forget these poor sinners. It is easy to say that they deserved all they got. No doubt they did. And what do we deserve? And when a man like myself has gone through that gate and mouth of Hell called Newgate, he looks on the poor creatures who go there to be flogged and branded and pilloried and hanged and transported with some compassion because he knows that such as they are, such they have been made. Mr. Merridew is always with them: the landlady of the Black Jack is always ready to buy what they offer her for sale: no respectable person will employ them; they have never been taught anything. The Divine and the schoolmaster dare not venture within their streets, which are the very Sanctuary of Wickedness; our charities are all for the deserving; we have no bowels, no compassion, for those we call the undeserving. Let us forget them. Better to lie at the bottom of the ocean, where at least it is peaceful, than to face the cruel whip of the overseer, and the burning fields of the American Plantations.