The Superintendent of convicts is thus perfectly apprized of every thing requisite for directing a just and satisfactory assignment of the prisoners; and as, when once they are placed in his hands, no other authority interposes, much good or evil is to be expected from his management. Mr. Hutchinson, the person now exercising that office at Sydney, was himself formerly a convict; and from his various means of obtaining intelligence, well may he be supposed,—so far as the ample jurisdiction he exercises can extend,—to possess information universally correct regarding the circumstances of every family: he is therefore fully competent to determine what description of convict is best suited for any particular service: too often, however, does caprice, if not motives more unworthy, appear to influence him in the performance of this important duty. It might be expected that the passions of prisoners, whether male or female, sentenced to transportation, having been long kept under by discipline, a sense of guilt, and repentant reflection during the voyage, would not easily be roused again into mischievous action; but a momentary consideration even of what is human nature, and how prone it is to evil, as also the former state of these persons, will forbid a too confident expectation that the mind long accustomed to habitudes of vice, and subdued only by a powerful sense of shame, or religious feeling, can be at once thoroughly reformed, and secure from relapse. It was doubtless with a view to prevent any thing of that unhappy tendency, that the local Government instituted the confinement of the prisoners, as already mentioned. The following circumstance will show how careful the Superintendent is to maintain this humane intention. There were two of the females under my care, whose behaviour during the voyage was so profligate, that, besides the character with which they were handed over at the muster, I was induced to point them out to the notice of the Governor, with a request that they might be separated from the others: to this His Excellency paid immediate attention, and gave orders to that effect. I mentioned the same matter, moreover, to the Superintendent of convicts, who made a note of it in his book, in my presence; yet on that very same evening these wretched creatures were permitted to go at large in the streets of Sydney, where necessity, or their own abandoned propensities, must have driven them to infamous practices.