TRANSPORTATION TO AUSTRALIA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VII, Issue 471, 9 May 1857, Page 5

TRANSPORTATION TO AUSTRALIA.

(F'om die W. Independent,' April 18.) The Imperial Parliament has been summoned for the 3rd of February; not " for the despatch of business," as the phrase usually runs, but for that ot divers urgent and important affairs," by no means the least of which is the adoption of further measures in reference to the British Criminal population. For some considerable time past crime has been increasing in England to an alarmiiig extent, and is perpetrated with a boldness perfectly incomprehensible. Those of our readers who visited Victoria when the rush to that colony was at its height, will remember very vividly the frequency with which persons supposed to carry money were " stuck tip," not only in the gold districts, but in the very streets of Melbourne, and in open day. The inhabitants of that city were not more in dread than are those of some of the large towns in England and especially London. The colohial citizen returning in the dusk of the evening to his home at Collingwood or Emerald Hill, was not under greater apprehension than his London brother who lives in the nighbourhood of Peckham or Hampstead now is. The 6ticking-up to which the former was liable is equalled by the risk of garotting to which the latter is subject. It is scarcely to be wondered at that under the6e circumstances the weak and timid should pass their nights subject in some degree to the fears which haunted Hugh Miller, when we learn that there are exposed in the shop windows, amongst other means of defence, an " anti-garotter " in the shape of an iron collar, spiked and studded all over with barbed hooks, to retain the strangler's hand, should it come near your throat, and that revolvers and *' other life preservers " find a ready sale; for it is no exaggeration to say that without something of this kind, those who travel the suburbs in the dark do not consider themselves secure.

The ticketrof-leave system is by general consexit doomed, amd recourse will in all probability again be had to'transportation. With the un? enviable exception of Swan River, and perhaps another to be named presently, none of the Southern colonies will receive convict labour »nder any circumstances whatever; yet it is in this direction that the establishment of penal settlement will most likely be attempted. "It seems to me," says the London correspondent of the ' Sydney Morning Herald,'" that you; have no right to object to the mother country settling a distant and unoccupied portion of the Australian territory by the same means which made Sydney a nation. I think ultimately that the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria and . perhaps the mouths of the rivers Albert and Victoria are destined to receive the criminal pcum of England, there to be churned into respectability by the same process which has make Botany £}ay into New South Wales," This new order of things is contemplated by the Australians with considerable alaj-in. The Parliament of New South Wales petitions and .deprecates the establishment of a penal colony along any portion of the eastern coast, while that of Victoria, in petitioning also, goes a step further, and urges that no portion of the Australian continent, or any of the adjacent islands, should be used as a place of transportation for felons from the mother country. That which has happened in the past, will, it is asserted, happen again in the future ; the golden attracr tion of the Victorian diggings is believed to he such as to influence the free by servitude and jticket-of-leaye men in the Gulf of Carpentaria, as certainly as they did those of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. Within a few months after J;he discovery of gold, the criminal class poured into Victoria in such yast numbers as to exhibit one-sixth of the entiremale population under the taint of eonyictism, and,"it was in consequence of this state of things (says the petition), that the colony Jiad to incur an expenditure of upwards of half a million of money per annum for prisons and police, ■—a sum equal to two pounds per head for the whole ' population: so that jf a tax in the same yatio were levied on the population pf Great Britain, the sum would amount to a felon-tax of fifty-six millions per annum. The exigency of the case was so great that the colonial legislature was compelled to _ pass a stringent law to prevent the influx of criminals from Van Diemen's Land or elsewhere; yet.

despite all the precautions used, many of the transported felons of our fatherland have settled in these colonies, and carry on their dreadful practices amongst them." If the object of England were merely to establish a prison, the Swan River Colony would suit admirably. Cut off by a desert from all internal communication with the other Australian colonies, the only mode of escape is by sea, and though a few do manage to get away now and then, the number is very small. But the district is full already, there is no necessary work for them to be employed on, and no population to reap any benefit from what has been done. The " four honest men and one modest woman" to every convict, or whatever was the agreed proportion of free immigration, has never arrived, and while therefore as a, prison Swan River may be a tolerably secure one, yet as a colony —as a place where the " reformed" criminals might gradually be absorbed into the community—it does not not answer the aim intended. All that applies to Western Australia, applies with equal force to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and England may just as well keep her convicts employed on useless works at home, as incur the expense of sending them to Northern Australia to be shut up with a regiment of soldiers, and with no general society into which they may eventually become incorporated. Certain landowners, stockholders, and other inhabitants of Moreton Bay, have, however, recently petitioned for the introduction into that colony of convict labour. One of the first aetß of the newly erected colony, it would at the" first sight seem, is to assure her Majesty that in consequence of the temptation of the gold fields, they cannot get any one to make their roads, and that " they are reluctantly forced" upon the compulsory labour; and are therefore compelled to relinquish their natural prejudices against the employment of convicts, believing that there is no other possible mode by which the country, on which their present dependence and their future hopes are centred, can be enabled to support herself and at the same time to sustain a separate government." They therefore humbly pray '" that convicts may be sent to Moreton Bay, to be employed solely and compulsorily on the public roads and works at the expense of the Imperial Government, and that the number of convicts so sent in each year may not exceed the number of free adult emigrants despatched by the British. Government to the said colony." Our readers will be glad to learn that this surreptitiously signed petition has called forth a burst of indignation iijNew South Wales, such as has not been equalled since the famous stand made by the Cape colonists. The language of the press, we quote below, is the language of the masses in Australia, and the British Goyernment will be wise enough to send her convicts somewhere else, rather than run the risk of bringing about a collision with her southern /colonies™ the effects of which it will never be in her power to efface. After describing the secrecy with which the petition was got up, a secrecy so well maintained that the inhabitants of Moreton Bay hos.tile to the movement were^ not aware of its existence until finally transmitted to the Queen, the' Herald' boldly enunciates the consequences that must follow a compliance with the Prayer of the Memorial.

*' That the British (Government, even in it« litnost straits, will violate every engagement of the Crown, and involve itself in a perpetual conflict with the great colonies of this hemisphere, is too preposterous for belief. If, however, that c .ur»e should be taken, we have nothing to do but prepare for an inevitable and early separation. We should not hetfate one moment as to ihe course to he pursued If the only terms upon which England will consent to retain 'possession of these colonies is that they be degraded to convict purposes, and reconverted, either directly or indirectly, into receptacles fora convict class, every feeling of human nature must rebel against the intolerable tyranny. We are not again and again to ftglit this battle. We are not to be harassed perpetually by petty and selfish efforts of men who either cannot or will not perceive that to bring robbers and cut- throats into a community is to endanger the peace, to sacrifice the property, and to degrade the reputation of the people. England, however, hu had sufhcien; warning. Every legislate body and every Governor has reiterated the firm resolution ot .the Australia*, and nothing can change that purpose. Divided, as we are, upon many points-many warmly attached to the authority of England, and desirous of going very far to maintain it, yet we should all become of one heart and of one mind t 0

resist, by every means that reason would justify, m. violent an exercise of ministerial power."

What of Sir Archibald Allison's friend—the " one New Zealand Proprietor" ? Convicts can be had for the asking, perhaps they may come, like many other unpleasant visitors, without waiting for that ceremony. It has been worth, the while of the Parliament of Australia to petition against the threatened influx, is it wia* for us to stand aloof, or shall we add the la»t straw that shall break the back of tbia monstrous injustice ?