old countries, where the economical causes of crime are most potent. It is an unquestionable fact that almost all the crime committed in the Australasian colonies is committed by persons who have been transported from this country. The courts of justice of New South Wales, Victoria, Southern Australia, and New Zealand are filled with these persons. The Legislature of New South Wales attempted to protect that colony against the expirees from Van Diemen's Land, by certain police regulations called the Vagrancy Act. That Act the Colonial Office has vetoed, to the intense disgust of the people of New South Wales, because it tended to prevent the free circulation of free criminals throughout Australia. The Governor of New Zealand has asserted that the greater portion of the large amount of crime in that colony is committed by expirees.

Thus, sir, the foul stream of crime rising in England, at first somewhat purified by passing through Pentonville and other penitentiaries, becomes foul again as it flows through the public works at Gibraltar and elsewhere, then traverses the moral swamps of Van Diemen's Land, acquiring fresh corruption, and pours its fœtid waters over the continent of Australia, whence its pestilential exhalations reach New Zealand and the remotest isles of Polynesia. The inhabitants of the Australian colonies know full well that the collective transportation of our criminals to Van Diemen's Land is ultimately transportation to them. They have been told it over and over again by the Colonial Office, and the persons who have endeavoured to persuade them to receive convicts from England. The staple argument of those gentlemen was, that it would be far better to receive convicts directly from England, with the pecuniary advantages which England had offered to those who would take her criminals off her hands, than to receive convicts, indirectly through Van Diemen's Land, without those pecuniary advantages. The answer of the Australian colonies has been, that they will not have convicts, either directly or indirectly. With this intention, they have adopted the idea of the Colonial Office, and formed an Australasian League. The motto of that league is abolition of transportation to Van Diemen's Land. Last autumn numerous anti-transportation meetings were held throughout New South Wales and Victoria. From these meetings emanated petitions to the Legislative Council of New South Wales against transportation, signed, I am informed, by

35,000 persons, including the three bishops and all the clergy of that colony. At all these meetings resolutions were passed in favour of assisting Van Diemen's Land in its efforts to abolish transportation, and similar sentiments were expressed in all the petitions to the Legislative Council of New South Wales. An anti-transportation association has been formed at Sydney. I have its report, dated January 6 last. According to that report it has petitioned the Queen and Parliament for the abolition of transportation to Van Diemen's Land. It has opened communications with all the principal towns and districts of New South Wales, Victoria, Van Diemen's Land, South Australia, and New Zealand; it has had the most encouraging answers from all these places; it has prepared a petition from all the Australasian colonies for the cessation of transportation to Van Diemen's Land, which petition I expect to have the honour of presenting to the House on some future occasion, with 50,000 signatures attached to it.

Sir, before I sit down, I wish to put one question to her Majesty's Ministers. Last year you gave representative institutions and self-government to Van Diemen's Land. What did you mean by so doing? How did you mean that the inhabitants of that colony should govern themselves? Did you mean that they should govern themselves in the manner which they think best for their interests, or in the manner which you think best for the interests of this country? Now, on the subject of transportation, there is a conflict between the alleged interests of this country and those of Van Diemen's Land. You think that it is for your interest to transport your convicts to Van Diemen's Land, and to cast forth your criminal filth on Van Diemen's Land. The inhabitants of that colony think that it is for their interest not to receive your felons, and not to continue to be your cesspool. Which of these two interests ought the representatives of the inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land to prefer? Ought they to prefer the interests of their constituents or of your constituents? They will without doubt prefer the interests of their own constituents. They are bound to do so by every recognised principle of constitutional government. They will do so. believe not one man will be elected a member of the House of Assembly of Van Diemen's Land who is not pledged to resist

transportation by every means in his power. What will you do? Discontinue transportation or repeal the Constitution of Van Diemen's Land? You must do one of these two things. For free institutions and transportation cannot co-exist in Van Diemen's Land as long as the feelings of the inhabitants of that colony are such as they are at present. I beg the House to observe that the question upon which I ask for a decision to-night is not whether there shall or shall not be such a punishment as transportation; upon that question I have repeatedly expressed opinions which are unchanged. The question for the House is not whether any more convicts shall be transported to any colony, but whether any more convicts shall be transported to Van Diemen's Land without the consent of its inhabitants. You have laid down the rule with regard to your southern colonies, that no convicts shall be sent to any one of them without its consent. You say that Van Diemen's Land shall be the one exception to that rule, that you created that colony for convicts, that you have a right to use and abuse your creation; that Van Diemen's Land has been, is, and shall continue to be, a penal colony. Then I say you have committed an act of insanity in giving to the inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land free institutions, and arming them with the best weapons to resist your will. I call upon you to keep faith with them, and to extend to them the rule that no convicts shall be transported to them without their consent. I have proved that all classes of free settlers in Van Diemen's Land, that Bishop and clergy, magistracy and gentry, tradesmen and labourers, fathers and mothers, are utterly hostile to the receiving of convicts under any system. I have shown that accumulated and appalling evils, moral, political, and social, have resulted from transportation to Van Diemen's Land; that in consequence of the existence of those evils, which you have repeatedly acknowledged to exist, the Colonial Office did promise, first, in 1846, to suspend transportation to Van Diemen's Land for two years; secondly, in 1847, to discontinue transportation altogether to that island; thirdly, in 1848, that the additions to be made from this country to the population of that colony should not consist principally of convicts. I have proved from your own despatches that every one of these promises has been distinctly made, and not one of them has been kept; that in 1846 you did not suspend

transportation to Van Diemen's Land; that in 1847 you did not discontinue transportation to that colony, and that since 1848 you have poured into Van Diemen's Land four times as many convicts as free emigrants. I have shown from resolutions agreed to at numerously-attended public meetings, and by petitions signed by every one of note and respectability in Van Diemen's Land, that your faithless and vacillating conduct has produced throughout the whole of Tasmania and Australia the deepest indignation and discontent, that it is destroying the attachment of Van Diemen's Land to this country, and is producing an Australasian League against transportation. I believe such a league amongst colonies with free institutions, situated at the antipodes, cannot be resisted. It appears to me, therefore, that it would be not only just but wise and prudent to take steps to bring about as speedily as possible the discontinuance of transportation to Van Diemen's Land. I exhort and warn the House to suffer no delay in this matter if it hold dear our Australasian dependencies. For many years I have taken the deepest interest in the affairs of those colonies. I am convinced that they are amongst the most valuable of our colonial possessions, the priceless jewel in the diadem of our colonial empire. I believe they can be easily retained, with a little common sense and judgment on our part; that, well governed they would cost us nothing, but offer us daily improving markets for our industry, fields for the employment of our labour and capital, and happy homes for our surplus population; that Australian empire is in peril from the continuance of transportation to Van Diemen's Land; and therefore I move that "An address be presented to her Majesty praying for the discontinuance of transportation to Van Diemen's Land."

ON COLONIAL EXPENDITURE AND

GOVERNMENT.

JULY 25, 1848.

[The resolution was seconded by Mr. Hutt, one of the small band of colonial reformers. Mr. Hawes, the Under Secretary for the Colonies, who replied, while traversing many of Molesworth's statements, "had not the least objection to the motion, which only carried out that course of policy which he had endeavoured to describe. He thought that the passing of the resolution would strengthen the hands of his noble friend, and enable him to proceed still further in the prosecution of the views which he entertained." The debate, however, stood adjourned.]

SIR,-In submitting to the consideration of the House the motion of which I have given notice, I must entreat the indulgence of the House; for the nature and extent of the subject will compel me to trespass at some length upon its patience. My object is, in the first instance, to call the attention of the House to the amount of the colonial expenditure of the British Empire; and in so doing I shall endeavour to establish the following positions: First, that the colonial expenditure can be diminished without detriment to the interests of the empire; second, that the system of colonial policy and government can be so amended as to ensure more economical, and altogether better, government for the colonies. And lastly, that by these reforms the resources of