Undoubtedly, where the disposition of the individual placed under punishment of that kind is very dissolute, restraint must have a salutary tendency. It may then be supposed, of course, that some means, besides that of confinement and the labours of the place, would be employed to repress their licentiousness, and recall their minds to serious reflection: moreover, the present Superintendent, Mr. Oakes, did formerly belong to the Missionary Society, who have pushed their zealous labours among the unenlightened savages of the southern hemisphere. Upon most strict inquiry, however, regarding this point, I have not been able to ascertain that any extraordinary or efficacious means had been used, or in fact any care whatever taken, to recover these daughters of vice and error from their depraved condition, and give them back in an amended state to the situations they had recently forfeited by their misconduct; or render them profitable examples for the others. That this observation is lamentably true, may be proved by reference to a recent instance, wherein two women, both then free, who had become so infamously wicked, and outrageously reprobate, as to be thought irreclaimable, and utterly unfit for the colony, or rather subjects too hard for the superintendency, were actually re-shipped, and sent home to England for reformation, on board the ship Shipley, in 1818. One of these incorrigibles is wife to Mr. Hutchinson, the principal Superintendent of convicts. A visitor on entering this penitentiary, this prison house, let his familiarity with gaol scenes be what it may, would be shocked at the noise, depravity of speech, disgusting freedoms, obsceneness, filthiness of person, and general degradation of character, which in every direction strike upon his senses. Indeed, so clamorous and importunate are they in their rude requests to strangers, for “something to drink,” that the benevolent few who would give salutary instruction are deterred from going among them. A friend whom I asked to accompany me to the place, refused on that very account, stating, that he had visited them some time before, and could not get away without extreme difficulty, although he had distributed twenty shillings to rid himself of the annoyance.