might work beneficial effects, and make their sentence, instead of being a curse to themselves and to the colony, contributory to the advantage and benefit of both.

But in anxiously considering this question with my colleagues, we are decidedly of opinion that no real amount of good can be effected, without putting an absolute stop to the system of assignment of females; and I am therefore to convey to you the instructions of Her Majesty's Government, that you do not permit the future assignment of any female convicts who may arrive subsequent to the receipt of this dispatch, or who may not have been already assigned.

I am aware that this may occasion, in the first instance, some, and perhaps a considerable increase of expense; but Her Majesty's Government are of opinion that the interests involved are too important and too urgent, to allow such considerations to interfere with the immediate adop tion of a system recommended by motives of justice and humanity.

You will therefore consider yourself authorized, in respect of females who may hereafter arrive, either to hire buildings for their confinement and superintendence apart from those who are already in the colony; or, if that cannot be accomplished at a reasonable expense, to detain the convict ship in which they may arrive, and in which some arrangements will have been made for their classification, and to allow them to remain on board until you shall be able to effect more permanent arrangements.

All accounts which I have received concur in repre senting the state of the female factories at Hobart Town and Launceston as exceedingly discreditable; as crowded to such an extent, as not only to have rendered it neces sary to abandon all attempts at employing the greater portion of the prisoners, but as defying all classification, and subjecting every class of offenders to the contamina tion of mutual bad example, in rooms so crowded, that, according to very high authority, it has occurred that the whole of the prisoners have been unable to lie down at one time, and that a portion have been kept standing while others rested.

In these factories are confined convicts who are unable

to obtain assignments, together with those who have been returned from assignment for the purposes of punishment, and those who being with child from illicit connections are thrown back on the hands of the government; and who, after their delivery, and being attended to at the public expense, again go forth, leaving their children a burthen on the public through the whole period of infancy and childhood, to return again in many cases, under similar circumstances.

This is a system which it is necessary altogether to remodel; while it continues, the evil which it engenders is constantly perpetuating and increasing itself. No respectable person will take a servant out of such a school: those who go out from it, go out to all sorts of temptations and vice, and again return, adding by their numbers to the crowds which render discipline impossible, and by their language and example, to the mass of vice which prevents the inmates from being healthily absorbed into the population.

I proceed to state to you the manner in which Her Majesty's Government propose to deal with a state of things so fearful, and requiring so urgently a prompt and effectual remedy.

It is our intention that measures should be adopted, with the least possible delay, for the construction, in a healthy situation, inland, and at a distance certainly not less than twenty miles from Hobart Town, of a penitentiary, upon the most approved plan, capable of containing at least 400 female prisoners. Instructions have been given to the Inspectors of Prisons in England to prepare the plan of such a building, which will be constructed at the expense of the Home Government. Immediately on the receipt of this dispatch, you will in concurrence with your council, institute inquiries as to the best site for such a prison; taking into consideration the healthiness of the situation, constant and easy access to good water, facilities of transport of building materials, and especially the neighborhood of stone and timber; but above all, the former. When, in conjunction with your council, you shall have decided on the site, you will immediately report to me your selection, and the reasons which have

influenced you in making it; but you will not think it necessary to await my approval before you commence such preparations as do not require that you should have the plan before you. It is necessary, therefore, that I should impress upon you the propriety of well considering every circumstance, before you incur the responsibility of making a selection on which so much depends.

When you shall have decided, you will communicate with the director of the probation gangs, and remove thither as large a number of convicts as can be safely housed and usefully employed, and occupy them in felling timber, quarrying stone, and all the more laborious work which will be required for the construction of the new penitentiary.

When the plans shall have been furnished to Her Majesty's Government and approved by them, they shall be sent out, together with such persons as it may be thought proper to select here for the purpose of superintending their execution.

To this penitentiary, when completed, it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government, that every female convict on her arrival, without exception, should be sent for a period of not less than six months.

It is hoped that considerable improvement has of late taken place in the management and discipline of female convict ships. It will be the endeavor of Her Majesty's Government still farther to improve the reformatory system on board, and to continue it, and keep alive the good feelings which it may have produced, after the arrival of the convicts on shore. I shall, in conjunction with the Secretary of State for the Home Department, endeavor to engage the services of competent persons to undertake the superintendence of this new establishment, who will be furnished with detailed rules for their guidance and for the conduct of the penitentiary, in which we shall endeavor, as much as possible, to surround the convicts with attendants of their own sex.

I have already stated to you the intention of Her Majesty's Government to apply to Parliament without delay for an amendment of the Act 2 and 3 W. 4, which has hitherto prevented the issuing of tickets of leave to female

convicts until the expiration of a considerable period of their sentence. We propose, when that act shall have been amended, that every female conviet who shall have conducted herself properly on board ship, and during the six months of her imprisonment, shall obtain, not a ticket of leave in the first instance, but a probation pass, upon the same principles: which I have already explained to you in reference to the male convicts; that the contract of service shall be entered into at the penitentiary itself, with the consent of the convict, and subject to the approbation of the governor. It will be expected that in all cases the employer should be bound to afford to the convict his personal protection in removing her to the place of her service.

During the whole period of the six months constant reports will be made, and retained, as to the conduct of the prisoners; and no prisoner will be allowed the privilege of a probation pass, unless her conduct on the whole shall have been satisfactory. It may be superfluous for me to add, that it is intended to regulate the gradual advance of the females through the stages of probation passes and tickets of leave, on the same principles which are directed to be applied to male convicts; with the same inducements to good conduct, and similar penalties attached to bad, during each stage of the process.

It is hoped, and believed, that by regulations such as I have described, an incentive to good conduct will be held out to the convict from the very first, in the hope not only of escaping from the coercion of prison discipline, but in that, which she can hardly have in any case under the present sytem, of redeeming her character, and being readmitted, after a graduated system of probation, into respectable and virtuous society.

We hope also, that the knowledge of these precautions on the part of the government will tend materially to diminish the reluctance of respectable colonists to engage the services of female convicts; a reluctance which it is obvious, on the present system, nothing but absolute necessity can overcome on the part of any persons with whom it can be desirable to place the convicts. We are the rather led to indulge this hope, because, we are in

formed, on the high authority of the late colonial secretary, that there is even now no difficulty in obtaining employment for females with tickets of leave; and that the instances are very rare in which tickets of leave have been again forfeited by females who have been fortunate enough to obtain them.

However painful may be the condition of those unhappy women who may now be under going the sentence of transportation, I feel it absolutely essential to the hopes of success under the new system, that no transfer should take place from the existing factories to the intended penitentiary; at the same time, I am very anxious that the inmates of the former should not be left in their present hopeless condition; and I have therefore to instruct you to cause immediate inquiry to be made into the present state of the factories both at Hobart Town and at Launceston, and to endeavor to ascertain the practicability, even in their present crowded condition, of improving the classification, and effecting a more complete separation between those who may seem wholly irreclaimable and those of whom better hopes may be entertained. You will be authorized to hold out to the latter and even to the former, the hope, that when the law allows it, probation passes, the nature of which you will cause to be explained to them, may be granted to them, but that such indulgence, and still more the higher one of tickets of leave, will be dependent wholly on their conduct, and on their ability, consequent on such conduct, to obtain employment.

If you shall succeed by these means in diminishing the existing pressure on the factories, you will endeavor, by improved arrangements, to make them, what I fear they are not now in any degree, places at once of punishment, of employment, and of reformation; and you will constantly bear in your own mind, and endeavor to impress on those of the convicts, that while the degradation of assignment is finally put an end to, the privilege of employment in private service can only be the consequence, the reward, and the encouragement of good conduct.

When the new system shall be in operation, it is to be understood that the penitentiary about to be built is to be devoted exclusively to the newly arrived; that the places