The despatch from Sir William Denison, informing the Colonial Office that he had announced the abolition of transportation to Van Diemen's Land, and that to revive it in any form would be a breach of faith, was received at the Colonial Office on the 5th February, 1848. The receipt was acknowledged by Earl Grey, by a despatch on the 27th April, 1848, in which, without reprimanding the governor for the sincealleged misconstruction of the despatch, which seemed to announce that transportation was to be discontinued, he thanked the governor for his valuable information, and, without preamble, announced that prisoners would be sent out with tickets of leave. From that period, without interruption up to the present time, the free colonists of Yan Diemen's Land have never ceased to agitate and protest against the system, with such unanimity that at the first general election under the new constitution no single member was returned who did not pledge himself to resist to the uttermost the continuance of transportation; and this in the face of opposition from candidates who were supported by all the influence of a government expending upwards of £100,000 a year.
It is quite true, as Earl Grey states in the apology for the failure of his colonial policy, which he has lately addressed to the (colonial) ignorance of the British public, that there were gentlemen in Van Diemen's Land who, sharing the patronage of the government, openly approved of this wholesale transportation. It is extraordinary, with so large a government expenditure among a community so limited, its supporters were not more numerous, and it is equally true that there were always employers to be found willing to engage the cheap labour provided by ships laden with "ticket-of-leavers." But cheap labour will always find customers, whatever the quality or morality. The pest and crime-breeding cottages of Dorsetshire, denounced by the Rev. Sidney Godolphin Osborne—the seven-shilling-a-week life, with a workhouse burial, as the goal of Wiltshire labourers—the employment of women in mines, and the unlimited hours of labour in factories, have, in turn, met with apologists as well as supporters. So in Van Diemen's Land, those who fertilised their lands or derived wealth from the moral cesspool approved it, and not unwillingly saw it overflow the neighbouring colony.
A key to the unpopularity which in Australia attended Earl Grey's administration of the Colonial Office, may be found in the communications which passed between certain elective members of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, who were chosen a corresponding committee, and the parliamentary agent or representative of the
