ness, and charity: and hoping that your health, which is so dear to such a number of unfortunates, will be fully re-established before we go, so that after our departure from our native land, those who are so unfortunate as to fall into our situation may enjoy the same blessings, both temporally and spiritually, that we have done before them. And may our minds be impressed with a due sense of the many comforts we have enjoyed whilst under your kind protection. Honoured and worthy Madam, we hope we shall be pardoned for our presumption in addressing you at this time, but our fears of not seeing you before the time of our departure induce us to entreat your acceptance of our prayers for your restoration to your family; and may the prayers and supplications of the unfortunate prisoners ascend to Heaven for the prolonging of that life which is so dear to the most wretched of the English nation. Honoured Madam, we beg leave to subscribe ourselves, with humble respect, your most grateful and devoted,
The following letter was from a convict at Paramatta, New South Wales, some time after her banishment to that colony:—
Honoured Madam,—The duty I owe to you, likewise to the benevolent Society to which you have the honour to belong, compels me to take up my pen to return you my most sincere thanks for the heavenly instruction I derived from you, and the dear friends, during my confinement in Newgate.
In the month of April, 1817, that blessed prayer of yours sank deep into my heart; and as you said, so I have found it, that when no eyes see and no ears hear, that God both sees and hears, and then it was that the arrow of conviction entered my hard heart; in Newgate it was that poor Harriet, like the Prodigal Son, came to herself, and took with her words, and sought the Lord. Truly I can say with David, "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have learned Thy ways, O Lord." . . . . Believe me, my dear Madam, I bless the day that brought me inside Newgate walls, for then it was that the ways of Divine truth shone into my dark mind. . . . . Believe me, my dear Madam, although I am a poor captive in a distant land, I would not give up having communion with God one single day for my liberty; for what is the liberty of the body compared with the liberty of the soul? Soon will the time come when death will release me from all the earthly fetters that hold me now, for I trust to be with Christ, who bought