The frequency of capital punishment in this country has long excited a general feeling of abhorrence, not merely from the removal of a malefactor from the stage of life, but the distress produced in the display of a scene relieving the unfortunate sufferer from worldly troubles, yet leaving a too painful impression on the mind of the spectator. There is a hallowed reverence thrown around the grave of even the hardiest offender whose crimes have been expiated by his death. The execution of his sentence protects not only against insult and upbraiding, but also secures a degree of pity for his sad condition. But when the Royal mercy, expunging the severe sentence of the law, and obliterating the obnoxious record, bids the wretch to live and “sin no more,” all the more pleasing ideas arising from seeing him restored to society and alienated from crime, are indulged by the humane. Hence arose a question of solicitude, whether the offender might not be made, in all possible cases, some way useful to society, or at least have the chance of effecting some expiation; thus securing to him the means of amendment in this life, and the hope of future mercy by a sincere repentance and sorrow for his past crimes. In the place of Death, the punishment of Transportation to remote lands under the dominion of the British Government, at first to North America, and subsequently to New South Wales, was adopted. To these places of banishment all persons were sent whose sentence had been commuted from death for transportation, as next in degree of severity in the criminal code, which (in happy as absolute rejection of all barbarous refinement in punishment) admitted no middle term between actual removal of the offender in loss of life, and the political annihilation of all his rights as a member of the state, for the term of his natural life, or a determinate period, during which, consequently, his services were to be useless but to the Crown or its assigns; and his condition, therefore, and its comfort altogether independent of his own arbitrament and volition. The convict was thus torn from every tie of relationship; and as even the depraved have their kindred affinities and private affections softened by some of the endearments of life, the separation rendered the fulfilment of the sentence painful, and in this respect satisfied one intention of the law. Indeed the very worst offender seems not so divested of the character of humanity, but that the possession of life is still held by some link of nature to him of strong association.