ever why they should be allowed to nestle themselves in Sydney, to disturb a whole colony, by exciting the worst passions of the worst characters in the empire, and thereby to expose His Majesty's government, as in the case of the convict Watt, to suspicion and distrust. There are fifty localities on the coast of New Holland, where a penal settlement, to be properly organized and conducted from the first, might be formed with the utmost facility. Let gentlemen convicts be transported for the future to a settlement of that kind; and, if under sentence for life, let them never be permitted to leave it. Away with the mawkish sentimentalism of those who would tell us, that such characters have never been accustomed to field- labour! It is necessary, I reply, that they should be accustomed to it: it is good for their moral health that they should learn to wield the spade and the hoe; and it is surely much better for that of the nation, that they should learn the use of these implements betimes, than that they should be permitted to wield such an instrument, either of good or of evil, as the public press.
