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New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land;” but pleads for convicts on the ground of the difficulties they have to encounter in opening proper lines of communication.[1]
These few individuals, about half of whom appear to be among the recent arrivals, wish to get out of their temporary difficulties, by the adoption of a measure which cannot be too strongly deprecated. Once introduced to King George’s Sound, and the convicts would soon find their way, as bush-rangers, over the whole of the colony. Recent accounts state, that a party of settlers, attended by a Government Surveyor, had visited the Hotham, a river 100 miles south of the Swan. They are represented as having returned highly pleased with the country, more especially with that on the banks of the river. Mr. Tanner, it is added, had made arrangements to have his grant there located immediately. With a view of marking out a line of road through the interior, the Surveyor-General was to proceed,
- ↑ It is curious to observe in connexion with the petition, that the Sydney Herald was, almost at the very same time, calling out for the withdrawal of convicts from that settlement, in consequence of the “rapid increase of crime.” “It must now be obvious to the colonists,” says this journal, “that if we place the convict system in one scale, and a free population in the other, the one is an abominable system of misrule and gross depravity, and the other is the only system by which this country (New South Wales) can gain a standing among the British colonies.” The writer concludes in these words, “Free labour will flourish in this country, as it has done in every free colony under the British crown.”
The following passage is also extracted from an article in the same journal, written on occasion of the recent murder of Dr. Wardell:—“In no country is life so insecure as in this: the convict servants being, in numerous instances, the first to destroy it. Let us look back and witness the scenes of atrocious murders that have been perpetrated under such circumstances. We see the murder of Mr. Clements; of Mr. M‘Intyre, by his convict servant; of Captain Payne; of Mr. Campbell, at his own door; of Captain Waldron, by his female convicts; of Captain Logan, through the instrumentality of blacks, incited by runaway convicts; and many other individuals of a more lowly rank in life. Each instance of the kind proves that the convict system, with its attendant satellite the convict government, is bad, and must be speedily remedied.”
