Deducting, therefore, from the ten thousand free emigrants of all classes and ages, who have
is equally evident and deplorable. For the last two or three years the streets of Sydney have been absolutely infested, both by day and by night, with female emigrants of the vilest character, whose passage-out has been paid for from the funds of the colony: whereas, during the whole period of my previous residence of ten years in New South Wales I never observed any thing of that kind. The thoroughly demoralizing influence of such exhibitions on the youth of the colony may be easily conceived, for one bad woman let loose upon society does infinitely more harm than half a dozen bad men; but the total amount of licentiousness and profligacy, which had not assumed so grossly disgusting a form, but which was, nevertheless, notoriously practised, as notoriously occasioned and supported by this monstrous, this infamous system, to the ruin of the peace of many reputable families in the colony, is utterly incalculable. The single fact, that during the year 1833 there had only been six persons, who had arrived free in the colony, confined in the gaol of Sydney, and that the number of such persons who had been so confined during the first seven months of the year 1836 had amounted to ninety, is of itself a pretty evident indication of the thoroughly demoralizing tendency of the female emigration system; for a large proportion of these persons were free emigrant females, the first female emigrant ship from London having arrived in New South Wales towards the close of the year 1833.
I left the colony for England on the 4th of July of that year; but on ascertaining, on my return to it in the month of November 1834, the real character and tendency of the female emigration system, I did all in my power to expose it to the
