Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/164

 for some years, had to support a number, varying from eight to ten thousand convicts, whom they are unable to employ usefully. This fact perfectly accounts for the proposition submitted to the House of Commons, to send out to New South Wales, and its auxiliary establishments, Irish emigrants; the poor's rates would proportionally decrease, and the emigrant planters would employ the transports, who by clearing away and preparations, would have paved the way for establishing themselves.

In the meantime, until the determination of government, the unemployed convicts lead, according to their own statements, a very agreeable life, since on a recent enquiry it has been found that many individuals have purposely committed an offence punishable by transportation, that they might be sent out to the colony. Humanity will certainly approve such results, if mildness soothes the manners of the convicts, but we know that idleness only increases bad inclinations, and this is proved from the return to vicious courses of those who return to England on the expiration of their sentence. Their amendment is scarcely more perceptible at the colony, for it is well known that of the three chapels, built at Sidney Cove, they have burnt two, with the intention of frustrating the order which constrains them to attend divine service.

The women, who are represented as purified by the change of hemisphere, testify for the greater part a sort of libertinism, incited in some measure by the vast numerical disproportion of the two sexes, which is as fourteen males for one female. Marriage with a convict, pardoned or freed, procuring them immediate liberty, the first thing sought by the women on their arrival at the depôt of Paramatta, is to get married to a man in these circumstances. They thus often set hold of an old man; a wretch, whom they leave after a few days, and return to Sydney, where they can freely abandon themselves to any species of excess. The result is, that surrounded by corrupt examples,