CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE ANTI-TRANSPORTATION CAMPAIGN.
SYNOPSIS:—Preliminary Remarks. —The Pentonvillians. —Importation of Convict Labor Advocated. —Arrival of the "Royal George" with "Exiles." —Monster Meeting against Convict Labor. —Barney Reynolds Addresses the Meeting. —Arrival of the "Thomas Arbuthnot." —More "Exiles." —Another Monster Meeting. —Resolutions against Convictism. —Arrival of Two Plague Ships. —Sympathy with the Cape. —Sympathy with Van Diemen's Land. —Anti-Transportation League. —The League and Solemn Engagement. —Liberal Subscriptions in Support of. —The Council of the League. —Mr. J. C. King, Delegate to England. —Official Declaration of Independence. —Political Separation from New South Wales. —Convictism a thing of the Past.
IT would seem like a dispensation of Providence that the plague of convictism was averted from the genial clime and sunny shores of Port Phillip. As the Southern portion of the Penal Colony of New South Wales, it was originally the intention of the British Government to constitute it a depôt for the reception of a quantum of the deported prison scum of the Home-country, and for that purpose the Collins' expedition of 1803 was despatched to make a beginning. If Colonel Collins had settled further up the Bay, turned into Corio Harbour, or squatted on the Yarra, his crop of felonry might have taken such root in the soil as to render it a matter of difficulty to extirpate it; but he drifted into the sandy, unpromising Sorrento, and conceived such a poor idea of what he saw about him that, on his urgent representations, the infant establishment was transferred to Van Diemen's Land. It is alleged against Colonel Collins that personal, or even sordid, motives prompted his action in the matter, but no sufficient proof has been adduced to warrant so serious an imputation. It may, therefore, be assumed that he was actuated by a sense of duty, based upon a very superficial knowledge of the country. The Province had a second narrow escape on the occasion of the attempted settlement of Western Port, in 1824, when the discouraging appearance of the surrounding scrubs and swamps again exercised the function of a guardian angel, and once more the proximate evil was averted. From 1836 until 1840 the gaunt spectre was not laid, but obtruded its tainting shadow, and flapped its unwholesome wings. When Captain Lonsdale was deputed to officiate as "Commandant" at Port Phillip he was more of a Convict Superintendent than anything else, and he brought with him all the appliances (except secure barracks) with which to control a small establishment. The very limited community consisted then mainly of two classes, viz., the free settlers and merchants (or, rather, the agents of Sydney, Hobart Town, and Launceston commercial houses), and the free by servitude or convict expirees. Between two and three hundred ticket-of-leave holders were poured into the place and distributed through town and country. This number would, no doubt, have been largely increased but for the want of sufficient means to keep a lawless horde under proper restraint. There were no buildings to be found capable of use for a prison barracks of any extent, and the Government was so niggardly that it shrunk from incurring the outlay necessary to provide a substantial receptacle for the safe custody of criminals. But the influx of Bounty Immigration, and the exodus from the British Isles, decided the issue, and Fate finally pronounced that the future Victoria should be unsoiled by the contagion of a penal colony. The ticket-of-leave men scattered about were gradually called in from assignment, and returned to bondage. En passant, it may be well to mention that originally Port Phillip prisoners under sentence of transportation were shipped off to Sydney, next to Hobart Town, and subsequently to Sydney again.
The Pentonvillians.
In the course of the year 1844, one of Fame's fabled hundred tongues wafted over the sea a vague intimation that it was intended to inflict upon the Province, what was, to all intents and purposes a modified system of convictism. The intelligence was received with incredulity and uneasiness; but a
