At 11 A. M. Mrs. Pryor and Mrs. Coventry, accompanied by the Solicitor to the Bank of England, came on board. _The Solicitor was commissioned by the Bank Company to make a present of five pounds to every woman who had been convicted of uttering forged notes, or of having them in possession._ The amount of the money thus gratuitously expended in favour of the unhappy women, was two hundred and five pounds sterling, there being _forty-one_ persons at this time sent out of the country for that offence alone. This donation to the female convicts,—for it is not given to males in the same predicament,—has, I am informed, existed for a considerable time, and doubtless originated in worthy feelings,—to alleviate in some degree the distresses and want brought upon them by their prosecution. Whilst one is compelled to approve this philanthropic condescension in favour of these unfortunate creatures, many of them surrounded by groups of children, a suggestion naturally forces itself into consideration, how far such a proceeding is consistent with political or moral propriety. It may be asked, Is honest principle encouraged by such gratuity? Is the offender moved to reformation by such an inducement, or is the property of the donors rendered more secure by their postliminious generosity? The prosecutions carried on by the Bank of England for many years past, for forged imitations of their notes, are too much matter of perfect notoriety. The victims, as well male as female, that have been immolated to the demon of gain, have been accumulated to a truly appalling amount. Human nature shudders at the numerous sacrifices offered on this altar. Although the Bank, it is asserted, virtually lose nothing, still the Moloch is to be appeased; and the Druidical idols mentioned by Julius Cæsar, in which numbers of human beings were burned alive, were not more rapacious than this remorseless spirit. The cry of blood has at length ascended, and good men are startled at this destructive system: to the eternal credit of later Bank Directors, those sanguinary proceedings have been in a great measure relaxed. In cases now of simply uttering forged notes, unless under circumstances of an aggravating character, upon trial, the judgement Not Guilty to the capital charge is admitted upon the plea of Guilty to the minor offence of having them in possession knowing them to be so: thus many lives are saved under that certain conviction which would subject them to death: their punishment on the latter plea is, in general, Transportation for fourteen years to New South Wales. The two ladies with bountiful hands dispensed their truly charitable gifts among those prisoners whom they had not before supplied; and the countenances of these unfortunates, gratefully affected by being thus noticed in their outcast state, gave stronger evidence of their feelings than could have been conveyed by the most successful eloquence.