human
in the population faded. No doubt the worst felons were promptly hanged, so that those transported were such as excited the compassion of the court in an age that recognized nearly three hundred capital offenses. Then, too, the bulk were probably the unfortunate, or the victims of bad surroundings, rather than born malefactors. Under the regenerative stimulus of opportunity, many persons reformed and became good citizens. A like purification of sewage by free land was later witnessed in Australia. The incorrigible, when they did not slip back to their old haunts, forsook the tide-water belt to lead half-savage lives in the wilderness. Here they slew one another or were strung up by
gpt
so that they bred their kind less freely than the honest. Thus bad strains tended to run out, and in the making of our people the criminals had no share at all corresponding to their original numbers. Blended with the dregs from the rest of the population, the convicts who were lazy and shiftless rather than criminal became progenitors of the
human
gpt
and
human
Appletons' Cyclopedia of American Biography.