colony, the Hon. Francis Scott, M.P., from which we shall presently make some extracts.
But as regards transportation, in 1848, the Legislative Council received some accession of strength from the squatter party; the colony was in straits from the cessation of immigration, which had fallen from some six thousand in 1842 to barely three thousand two hundred during the whole five years of 1843, 1844, 1845, 1846, and 1847, and ventured to pass a resolution assenting to a proposition made by Earl Grey, by which he undertook to forward a certain number of criminals who had passed through a course of discipline in British penitentiaries, to be landed with tickets of leave; and further to accompany their immigration with that of an equal number of free emigrants to be sent, not at the cost of the Colonial Land Fund, but of the British Exchequer.
The passing of this resolution was the signal for the organisation of a fierce agitation against the renewal of transportation, which was kept alive by the arrival from time to time of small bands of felons under the new name of exiles.
Sir Charles Fitzroy's despatch, enclosing Mr. Wentworth's resolution in favour of the renewal of transportation, reached England in August, 1848.
The financial state of the country deterred the English government from proposing the vote needful for defraying the expenses of the free emigrants promised to the colony, in consideration of their receiving convicts. Had the compromise been strictly fulfilled by Earl Grey, and accompanied by such measures as would have prevented the convicts from remaining in towns to compete with free labourers, it is possible that convictism might have been endured for some years longer; at any rate until the discovery of gold rendered transportation to Australia absurd as a punishment. But Earl Grey, in a defiance of public opinion in the colonies, as exhibited in a crowd of petitions, resolutions, and reports of public meetings forwarded to him, as well as in the universal tone of the colonial newspapers, adopted that part of the bargain which suited the mother country, and neglected to fulfil the colonial conditions on which the concession was made. He decided to send out prisoners but no free emigrants—revoked the order iu council of 1840, by which New South Wales had ceased to be a place for the reception of convicts—and commenced to send out the pets of Pentonville and Parkhurst.
The publication of this despatch in the colony was received with one universal outburst of indignation. A passage at the conclusion of
