has been appropriated by the Government to other purposes. And the colonists most loudly and, in my opinion, most justly complain of this act as a most grievous abuse, as a sort of robbery. From the commencement of the sale of lands in 1832 to the end of 1838, 571,000l. has been paid into the Land Fund. Of this sum not above 171,000l. have been employed in emigration. Of the remainder, 138,000l. may have been expended in the sale, management, etc., of the land. The residue, amounting to 262,000l. has been alienated from the purposes originally intended, and applied by the Government to the support of the enormous police and gaol establishments, which transportation has rendered necessary, and which the colonists, with no small show of justice, contend ought to be defrayed by this country. Such was the state of the Land Fund in the beginning of 1839. Since that period the same system has been pursued, and I am credibly informed that the Land Fund has been completely exhausted by the drains upon it by the Government. Indeed, in the middle of last year the noble lord, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, was obliged to order the discontinuance of emigration to New South Wales. Therefore, unless a loan be raised, emigration to New South Wales must stop, to the most serious injury of that colony, as every person well acquainted with this subject will readily acknowledge.

I now thank the House for the patient manner in which it has listened to me. I have been obliged, for fear of wearying the House, to pass over many points of considerable importance. I hope, however, that I have succeeded in proving the following

positions. That transportation is a very bad punishment. That it is not susceptible of any improvement. That it ought, therefore, to be abolished. That the best substitute for it is penitentiaries. That the penitentiary system would be less expensive than any of the proposed modifications of transportation. That a large additional outlay of public money would not be required in order to establish penitentiaries, and to bestow upon this country the best system of secondary punishments in the world. And, lastly, for the sake of the moral well-being and economical prosperity of the penal colonies, that systematic emigration should be carried on in the manner I have proposed.

I will conclude by moving : "That the punishment of transportation should be abolished, and the penitentiary system of punishment be adopted in its stead as soon as practicable"; and: "That the funds to be derived from the sales of waste lands in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land ought to be anticipated by means of loans on that security, for the purpose of promoting extensive emigration to those colonies."

EXTRACT FROM SPEECH ON THE DISCONTINUANCE OF TRANSPORTATION TO VAN DIEMEN'S LAND.

MAY 20, 1851.

[The discontinuance of transportation to New South Wales after 1840 caused a severe strain upon the resources of Van Diemen's Land as a receptacle for convicts. Parliament was opposed to the policy of dealing with criminals in England, so that there was a continuous stream of convicts to Van Diemen's Land. A scheme of Mr. Gladstone to found a new convict colony in the north-east of Australia came to nothing, and an attempt to reintroduce a modified system of transportation into New South Wales also ended in failure. The case for the British Government, in its attempt to run counter to the feelings of the colonies, is well stated by Lord Grey in his "Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration," but it was doubtless fortunate for the Empire that the Colonial Office passed, in 1852, into the more pliant hands of Sir John Pakington, who at once discontinued transportation to Van Diemen's Land. The following extracts are added to complete the story of Sir W. Molesworth's Parliamentary connection with the subject of transportation. After a reply from Sir George Grey, and other speeches, the debate came to a premature close by the House being counted out.]

After dealing with the moral and social evils resulting from transportation to Van Diemen's Land, and the breach of faith involved in its continuance after the announcement by Sir W. Denison of its abolition, Sir W. Molesworth continued:

In April, 1850, an event occurred which doubled the excitement in Van Diemen's Land against transportation. It was the arrival at Hobart Town of the ship Neptune, with its cargo of convicts, which the colony of the Cape had rejected. This event produced the deepest indignation amongst the colonists

of Van Diemen's Land. They looked upon it as an insult as well as an injury. They had heard of the circular which had been issued by the Colonial Office, on the 7th August, 1848, to the Cape of Good Hope, New South Wales, and the other Australian colonies, with the exception of Van Diemen's Land. In that circular the Colonial Office had laid down the rule that no convicts were to be transported to any one of those colonies without the consent of their inhabitants. Van Diemen's Land had been excepted from that rule, on the special plea that it was a penal colony. Its inhabitants held that plea to be a most unjust and tyrannical one; for they argued that the only difference between their colony and New South Wales had been occasioned by a breach of faith on the part of the Colonial Office, in not fulfilling the promise to abolish transportation; and that, if that promise had been fulfilled, transportation could not have been resumed in opposition to their wishes without a violation of the rule laid down by the Colonial Office. The arrival of the Neptune showed them how successfully the colony of the Cape had resisted an attempt to violate that rule, and gave them ocular demonstration of two important facts-first, that it was the deliberate intention of the Colonial Office to make their colony a huge cesspool, in which all the criminal filth of the British Empire was to be accumulated; secondly, that it was in the power of the people of a colony, by combination, vigour and self-reliance, to defeat the intentions of the Colonial Office, and to compel it to keep faith.

I am convinced that the arrival of the Neptune will hereafter be a memorable epoch in the history of the abolition of transportation to Van Diemen's Land. The free colonists. immediately protested against the landing of the convicts from that ship. They have made similar protests on the arrival of every subsequent convict ship; and with every protest their anger was increased, till their wrath was incensed to the highest degree by the arrival of the report of a speech said to have been delivered last year by the noble lord the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in another place. In that speech the noble lord was reported to have expressed himself to the effect that the Imperial Government had created the colony of Van Diemen's Land for convicts, that the free settlers had established themselves there with their eyes open to the present state of things, and had no right to complain. At all their public meetings

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they have denied the accuracy of that statement; they said that they had emigrated to Van Diemen's Land before it had been made the sole penal colony of England; that the Imperial Government had encouraged them to emigrate, and sold them lands, and by so doing had entered into a tacit compact with them that it would not so abuse its power of transportation as to drive out the free inhabitants and render the possession of their lands intolerable.

In the same speech the noble earl was reported to have said that the free colonists had become less adverse to transportation than they were in 1847. They have flatly contradicted the noble earl; they asserted that the noble lord, like his predecessor, Lord Stanley, was ignorant of the state of the colony; that, living on the opposite side of the globe, he was liable to be misinformed by officials, who have a deep pecuniary interest in the continuance of transportation, whose salaries depended upon upholding transportation, and who boldly invented and repeated fictions, knowing almost a year must elapse before they could be contradicted. Sir, as I have already said, the Bishop, the clergy, and the free colonists of Tasmania, have declared, in contradiction of the statement of Lord Grey, that they are utterly hostile to receiving convicts under any system; and with the view of proving Lord Grey's assertion to be erroneous, in each of the three districts of the colony, large public meetings were held last autumn. First, on August 9 last, in the northern district; from this meeting I have presented this year a petition with 1,519 signatures, including those of the Bishop of Tasmania and the Archdeacon of Launceston. Secondly, on September 12, a meeting was held in the southern district, from which I have presented this year a petition with 2,625 signatures. Thirdly, on September 17, a meeting was held in the central district, from which a memorial was addressed to Earl Grey. At one of these meetings Mr. Weston, a justice of the peace, a well-known and respectable gentleman, one of the oldest settlers in Van Diemen's Land, moved a resolution contradicting the statement that they had become reconciled to transportation. In so doing he drew, amidst the cheers of the meeting, a striking picture of the social state of the colony. He spoke to this effect:-"I think that, generally speaking, noble lords and English gentlemen know nothing about the state of our colony. It has occurred to me