24 THE EXPEDITION 1786 necessity, '^ no penitentiary houses having been built, thongh an Act had passed for their erection/' Official Judging from the extremely curt allusion to the matter in the King's speech, it would appear that the (xovemment did not think it expedient to invite discussion with respect to their colonising project. No debate seems to have taken place at any stage of the business, even the bill to enable his Majesty to establish a Criminal Judicature on the eastern coast of New South Wales and the parts adjacent " having passed without comment.* The measure seems to have been treated as if it contained nothing beyond a provision for the disposal of felons. Possibly the Government may have objectiona been influenced by the objections urged in different quarters ment policy, to any proposal for the establishment of a new colony. They had to encounter objections from the East India Company to any interference with their commercial monopoly; objec- tions from philosophers who considered colonies a source of weakness to the mother country ; objections from critics who looked upon the eastern coast of New Holland as, per- haps, the most barren, least inhabited, and worst cultivated country in the Southern Hemisphere t j aiid objections from humanitarians who argued that, if the Government had chosen to embrace the single purpose of forming a settlement at Botany Bay, they would be justly censurable in inviting the industrious and reputable artisan to exchange his own happy soil for the possession of territory, however extensive, in a part of the world as yet so little known.'^t Sources of But notwithstanding the indifference with which the pro- mlnt!^^^ posed expedition appears to have been received in political circles, a glance at contemporary history is enough to show that there were other objects in view in the minds of English statesmen besides the relief of overcrowded gaols. In the first place, the loss of the American colonies naturally • There is no reference to the bill in the Parliamentary History for 1787. + Post, p. 467. X The History of New Holland, 1787, preface, p. v. Digitized by Google
