"The removal of criminals to our Australian colonies was an experiment whose failure, though not anticipated to the extent that should have been expected, has in some degree been forced by experience upon the minds of

most."

As a colonist of New South Wales sincerely desirous of advancing the general prosperity of that colony—as a minister of religion still more desirous of promoting the moral welfare of its anomalous population-I for one should not be sorry though not a single additional convict were ever to be landed in New South Wales, or a single additional sixpence of British money to be expended on account of convicts in its territory. For I am persuaded that if the Government of the colony were placed on such a footing as to develope its vast resources with energy and discretion, and to expend its available revenue with economy and efficiency; and especially if the funds arising from the sale of waste land within its territory were to be placed under the management of a board of intelligent and active colonists, instead of a board of gentlemen in London, to be appropriated exclusively to the encouragement and promotion of free emigration to the colony-the colony might well dispense with any future accession to its convict-population, and might in perfect sincerity address the administrators of the law in the mother country in the language of the poet,

Claudite jam rivos, pueri; sat prata biberunt.

But as a British subject-as a citizen of the world, not less deeply interested in witnessing and in pro

moting the full accomplishment of that great and worthy object for which the colony of New South Wales was originally established,-I have no hesi tation in expressing my opinion and belief, that it would be nothing less than absolute madness for the British Legislature to discontinue the transportation of felons to the Australian colonies, for the purpose of experimenting on the projects of Archbishop Whately.

I deny the Archbishop's premises, viz. that "the transportation of felons is an experiment whose failure has been decidedly proved." At the same time I ask the reader whether any man, after perusing the pre

"How are we to account for the attachment of the richer colonists to this horrid system of transportation? By their want of free labour; by their anxiety to keep that slave labour, without which each of them could use no more capital than his own hands could employ. They say, and. with perfect truth, that if the supply of convicts were stopped, the colony' would be ruined. Assuredly the colony would be ruined, unless the richer settlers should find the means of obtaining either free labour, or that kind of slave labour which they have in America."

ENGLAND AND AMERICA, pp. 113 and 114. The colony would not be ruined though not a single man from England, either free or bond, should ever be landed on its shores in addition to its present population; but its progressive advancement would in that case, I confess, be much less rapid than if the system of transportation were continued, and the influx of free emigrants greatly increased. It is preposterous, however, to talk, with the author of the able and original work just quoted, of the system of transportation being continued by the British Government because of the patronage it affords His Majesty's Ministers. "If English convicts," says that writer, "were punished by imprisonment at home, though the English aristocracy would have to bestow upon their dependants more places, such as that of jailer or turnkey, they would miss the disposal of a number of places such as gentlemen will accept. The Governor of New South Wales is a jailer; but, being called Your Excellency, and paid accord

ceding sketches of the history of New South Wales, cạn say that that experiment has ever yet been fairly or properly tried? The fact of the matter is simply this: for a long period after the colony of New South Wales was originally established, and during the most important period of the past existence of that colony as a penal and experimental settlement, the attention of the British Government was entirely absorbed by the overwhelming concerns of a just and necessary war, which, however it may have eventually increased the

ingly, he is thankful for his place—as thankful as any one ever is for a place which he has obtained by electioneering services."-Ibid.

The Governor of New South Wales is not a jailer; for two-thirds of the inhabitants of that colony are free persons, and not inhabitants of a prison. It is a very easy thing, however, to call nick-r x-names. How easy, for instance, would it not be to call the Governor of Jamaica a negro-driver, because a large proportion of the population of that island consists of negroes in a state of bondage!

But even supposing the salaries of all officers of the crown in New South Wales reduced to the American standard, and the profitable patronage of the Home Government in that colony done entirely away,I, as a British subject, equally interested in promoting the national welfare with the author of " England and America," and perhaps as competent to express an opinion on the subject of transportation as that writer, would still maintain most decidedly, that the system of transportation ought to be continued by the British Government-not indeed for the benefit of New South Wales, or of any other penal settlement on the Australian continent, but for the moral welfare of the mother country itself. The abuse of a system-and who that reads these pages but will acknowledge that the whole system of the Australian colonies has been little else during a great part of their existence than a grand abuse of the system of transportation?-is no argument against the proper and well-regulated use of it. The system of transportation and the principle it involves are good in the abstract—nay, noble; it is folly and incapacity, or something worse than either, that have made them appear otherwise to the people of England.

glory of the nation in the estimation of fools, has only served, in the estimation of every wise and of every Christian man, to demoralize the nation, and fearfully to increase the amount of the national misery and of the national crime. Meanwhile the entire management of the noblest experiment that was ever made by any civilized nation since the foundation of the worldI mean the experiment of a penal colony on a great scale was recklessly entrusted to mere chance, to ignorance, to incapacity, to the full play and the uncontrolled operation of the worst passions that disgrace humanity. And is it in such circumstances, then, that we are to be coolly told by His Grace of Dublin, sitting in his study sixteen thousand miles from the scene of action, that the experiment has decidedly proved a failure?

Instead of investing a naval or military officer with the multifarious and often incompatible powers that were most injudiciously combined in the person of the Governor of New South Wales, from the first establishment of the colony, had the British Government appointed a council of seven members,-consisting of men of experience in the management of criminals, men of general intelligence, of decision of character, and of approved philanthropy, entrusting to that council the administration of the whole affairs of the colony, giving them a strong and efficient police for their support, and placing the officer in command of the troops required for the protection of the settlement entirely under their control,— the important experiment involved in the establishment of the colony of New South Wales would have received

a fair trial, and its issue, I am confident, would have been entirely satisfactory; the reformation of the convicts would have been general, rapid, and progressive; and thousands, and tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of British money, which, to say the very least, were lavishly and unprofitably expended under the system actually pursued, would have been saved to the nation. It is only after an experiment conducted in some such way as this-I mean in a way somewhat accordant with right reason and common sense— -shall have been made and eventually proved a failure, that I shall ever be induced to subscribe to the sentiments of the Irish Archbishop; for, of all species of punishment, I am persuaded that, under a proper system of management, transportation would be found to combine, in the highest degree, all the four requisites which the Archbishop himself most wisely establishes, in being humane, corrective, cheap, and formidable.

The preceding quotations from Archbishop Whately's work I have merely copied from a newspaper, having never had an opportunity of consulting the work itself; of whose merits, in other respects, I should be sorry to say a single syllable in depreciation. I have met, in a similar quarter, with the following statement relative to the system of transportation, from some paper on the subject in the London Review: "In the generality of cases, the discipline undergone in the colony should be sufficient even to undo the evil of the voyage; to remove but the additional contamination contracted during the voyage out is more than either reasonable conjecture or experience would allow us to hope." It is thus taken