any responsibility) for the Colonial Office the difficult functions of conducting emigration with the public money of the colony. But this is not all. Only a portion of this vast emigration fund has been applied, however improperly, to its proper purpose. The remainder, amounting to no less a sum than 200,000l., is locked up in the public chest at Sydney, lying idle, of no use whatever, although the demand for labour is more urgent than at any previous time, and the colonists have vehemently prayed that the money, which they paid for land, may be expended according to the conditions on which they paid it. And this sum in the public chest is not only useless, but it is worse than useless; for, since ready money was paid for the land, a great part of the currency of the colony is thus absorbed and locked up in the Government chest. The loud and frequent complaints of the colonists on this subject have fallen upon the ear of the noble lord as if he were stone deaf. This, sir, after transportation, about the horrors of which the noble lord seems to have known nothing until they were brought to light by the Committee of Inquiry, even if he knows anything about them now, this is a subject of the deepest importance to the penal colonies; and what attention has the noble lord paid to this important question of free emigration by means of the sale of waste lands? None whatever! But has he no excuse for his total neglect of this important and urgent colonial subject? I would put the question to my hon. friend the member for Sheffield,' who, in the Session of 1836, presided with uncommon ability over a

1 Mr. H. (afterwards Sir H.) Ward.

Committee of this House, by which this subject was most carefully examined and which Committee strongly recommended the adoption of a system for giving complete and permanent effect to Lord Howick's regulations, as they are properly termed ; I ask the hon. gentleman the member for Newark, who took a very prominent and very valuable part in that inquiry, what notice has the noble lord taken of the labours of the Committee? None whatever. The noble lord has treated the Report of the Committee as if it were so much waste paper; and I am not surprised at it, for I believe that the inquiry of 1836 concerning waste lands and emigration was obtained, like the inquiry on transportation, without any assistance from the noble lord, by the aid of another Minister, as if in truth there were no such Minister as the noble lord at the head of the Colonial Department. I am not therefore the only member of this House who, in seeking for information on a very important colonial subject, has passed by the Colonial Minister as if there were no such person in existence.

There is another fact, sir, as to New South Wales, from which the people of that colony might be justified in inferring that there really is no such person in existence as the Colonial Minister, that Lord Glenelg is a merely imaginary personage, a nominal being, without functions to perform, or at least without capacity to perform them. For many years New South Wales has been governed by an Act which expired in the year 1836. That Act established a temporary system and form of government, a system and form of government suited to

the time when the Act passed; that is, when the majority of the inhabitants of the Colony were convicts under punishment. Need I add that this system of provisional government was (necessarily under the circumstances) of a most despotic character; that it neglected altogether the principle of representation, and gave to the colonists no voice whatever in the management of their own affairs? But since then the circumstances of the colony have altogether changed. The free colonists have become the majority. Those free colonists, naturally desirous to obtain some of the rights of Englishmen, have looked forward with the deepest anxiety to the period when the New South Wales Act would expire, to the time when Parliament would have to legislate anew on the subject; and when they might hope that Parliament, in framing a constitution for a free people, would bestow on them some degree of representation, and give them some voice in the management of their own local affairs. To the colonists of New South Wales, therefore, 1836 was a most important year. Was the noble lord, the Colonial Minister, prepared for this very important colonial occasion? Did he submit to Parliament a new constitution for the colony ? No; he only asked Parliament to renew the old Act for one year. But in 1837 it will be supposed, when this Act of a twelvemonth would have expired, that the noble lord was prepared. Not a bit of it! In 1837 he again asked for and obtained the renewal of the old Act for another twelvemonth. But, perhaps, it may be said that the noble lord believed that the colony was not ripe for any other than the old despotic constitution, and

that he acted deliberately in renewing the old Act from year to year. Not at all, sir; for on both. occasions the Under-Secretary for the Colonies,1 acting undoubtedly on behalf of his chief, gave notice of his intention to propose an entirely new Act for the government of the colony. On both occasions, no doubt, the noble lord intended to relieve the colonists of New South Wales from their anxiety on a subject which must ever be one of the deepest interests to freemen; but on both occasions he only exhibited his own infirmity of purpose. Is he prepared this year? or are we to renew the old Act for the third time? Are we for the third time to tell the free people of this colony that we care so little about them as to neglect altogether a matter about which they care above all things? And if we do so, are we to wonder at their resentment?

Here, then, sir, as respects one colony, are three great questions, urgently pressing on the unwilling attention of the noble lord. First, a remedy for the terrible evils of transportation; secondly, a means of saving the colony from economic ruin; and, thirdly, a new constitution for the colony. Each of these questions is rendered more difficult by the noble lord's neglect of it hitherto. If we are to judge by the past, what are we to expect for the future ?

As respects New South Wales, I have only to add further, that this is one of the several colonies of which the Governors have recently resigned, or been recalled, on account of differences between those Governors and the Department over which Lord Glenelg so neglectfully presides.

1 Sir G. Grey.

In the neighbourhood of our penal colonies there exist circumstances which, whilst they call for prompt and vigorous action from the Colonial Minister, strongly exhibit Lord Glenelg's inattention and neglect. I allude to the state of many islands in the South Seas, whose inhabitants are subjected to every species of evil from the lawless residence amongst them of British subjects, and especially of convicts who have escaped from our penal settlements. The islands of New Zealand afford the most striking example both of an urgent necessity for some comprehensive measure of prevention and of Lord Glenelg's carelessness. And here again I may refer to a Committee of this House, the Committee on Aborigines, which in 1836 collected very conclusive evidence on the subject, and of which the Under-Secretary for the Colonies was a member. It appears from the evidence before that Committee, and from other documents recently laid on the table of the House, that not less than 2,000 British subjects have settled in New Zealand; that so many as 200 of them are absconded convicts; that they are not subject to any law or authority; that they do exactly what pleases them; that they have pleased to commit crimes towards the natives, at which humanity shudders; and that, in fact, the native race is rapidly disappearing before them. It is in evidence that our lawless fellow-subjects have excited the native tribes to wars and massacres, in order to obtain tattooed heads as an article of commerce; that they have taught the natives to employ corrosive sublimate in poisoning their enemies, and have actually sold them that poison for the purpose; that these out