all the transported felonry of Great Britain, either as prisoners or freedmen. To this it was answered, that the colony had had the benefit of their work. However, as a per contra, the surplus of the fund derived from the sale or lease of crown land was allowed to be taken to assist the colonial revenues, after defraying the expenses of emigration. The terms of this arrangement or contract, as the colonists assert, are to be found in despatches with enclosures from Mr. Spring Rice, and from Lord Glenelg, dated respectively 15th November, 1834, and 10th July, 1835. It is not now worth while to quote or discuss them. The truth seems to be, that, while the returns from the land revenue were trifling, the officers of the crown did not care to have the spending of them, having admitted that it was "just and reasonable that the revenues should be applied wholly and exclusively for the benefit of the colony." But, when the land revenues rose to hundreds of thousands of pounds annually, the question assumed a different aspect in the eyes of a young but accomplished bureaucrat like Sir George Gipps.
Sir Richard Bourke, after receiving the despatches in question, believed that the Legislative Council had the complete control of the land revenue. He seems to have been always anxious to extend the legislative powers of the colonies.
Sir George Gipps commenced what may be called, to use a slang term of modern politics, his reactionary course of policy, by repudiating the assumed contract in the extract from a despatch, dated November, 1838, which alone affords a complete key to the favour in which he was held at the Colonial Office, and the detestation in which he was held in the colony:—
"It is asserted in the colony that the right to appropriate this revenue was conceded to the governor and council by a despatch, &c., and that this right was recognised by Sir Richard Bourke … Notwithstanding the strength of these expressions, I must say that I very much doubt whether, by the Treasury letter of the 24th September, 1834, it was intended to give up unreservedly, and for ever, the right to select the objects on which the crown revenue (viz., from colonial land) should be expended; and I therefore, whenever occasion required, maintained, during the last session of the council, that the crown has still power to do so—feeling that, if wrong in this opinion, I could easily set myself right with the council; but, if I committed an error the other way, I might involve myself in difficulties from which there would be no escape." And he proceeds with great ingenuity to "get up a case" to enable the Colonial Office at home to shear the colonists of the trifling powers recently conceded to them.
