TRANSPORTATION RENEWED BY FORCE. (From the Sydney Morning Herald, Feb. 27.)

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume V, Issue 384, 7 April 1849, Page 3

TRANSPORTATION RENEWED BY FORCE. (From the Sydney Morning Herald, Feb. 27.)

The publication last week of the letters of Mr. Jackson, now in London, on a political mission from Van Diemen's Land, had prepared the people of this colony for the disagreeable tidings contained in the official despatch published in our columns of yesterday. It was fortanate that the bad news was thus gradually broken, for bad the Secretary of State's announcement come upon us suddenly, the shock would have been much more violent and our feelings of resentment and disgust proportionately more intense. Prepared as we were, however, this cool, complacent, undisguised avowal of a gross breach of faith on the part of her Majesty's Government, has made us blush for the tarnished honour of the British name. For what are the circumstances of the case? In 1846 Mr. Secretary Gladstone proposes a renewal, with certain modifications, of thetransportation system. The proposition was scouted from one end of the colony to the other and eventually by the Legislative Council itself. In 1847, Earl Grey proposed another scheme of a kindred nature, but divested of the more objectionable properties of the former one, and accompanied by stipulations which promised to neutralise much of the evil inherent in convictism under any form. To this proposition the colonists, under the extremities to which they have been reduced by a scarcity of labour, yielding a reluctant consent, not doubting for a moment that it had been made with perfect sincerity, and would be scrupulously carried out in all its integrity. But what is the result ? Her Majesty's Government have completely shifted their ground, turning round upon us with a statement to the following effect : "We offer to send you British Exiles on terms which we thought to be at once essential to your moral interests, and calculated to remove your very just objection to a measure of so 'questionable a character. On these terms you agreed to our overture ; and thereupon a bargain between us was fairly struck. We acknowledge that, on every principle of honest dealing, we thus became bound to fulfil our part of the agreement to the very letter. But we found out that we could not do so without a round sura of money ; and money we could not get without a vote from Parliament ; and Parliament was just finishing its session ; and we doubt whether Parliament, at any period of the session would have voted us the money at all. And so all things considered, we have thought it expedient to set the bargain aside, and to send you convicts in our own way, just as if no bargain have ever been made." We do not like to speak evil , of dignities ; but in the transactions of private life such conduct would be branded with the most odious epithets, and its authors held up to general scorn. It is the sacrifice of honour on the altar of expediency. In minds rightly constituted, first thoughts are often the best. So it v/as in this instance with Earl Grey. When he first became aware of the impracticability of his own terms, by reason of the financial derangements of the country, he at once perceived What was the right course to be pursued. " Under these circumstances," says his lordship in the despatch, " my first impression was, that it would be necessary to abandon altogether the idea of sending out convicts to New South Wales, as I readily acknowledge that after what has already taken place upon this subject, her Majesty's Government cannot, without the consent of the colonists, refuse to provide for the conveyance of an equal number of free emigrants, if convicts are to be sent at all to New South Wales." Exactly so. This was the true state of the case ; and the " first impression" produced by a calm view of the nevr difficulties which had supervened, was the only one consistent with honour and good faith. The thought of sending out a single convict until the colonists should have first released the Minister from his pledge, ought to have been crushed in the bud. No consideration of expediency ought to have been allowed to warp his Lordship's mind for one moment, from the rectitude of its " first impression." The tempter, however, " was listened to ; and, as a matter of course, he triumphed. " Further consideration" reconciled the noble Secretary to the very thing from which at the very outset he virtuously recoiled. His attempt to justify his conduct — we say it with all proper respect — is a miserable failure. He urges several pleas ; but only one of them is worthy our notice, all the rest being foreign fiom the point. He pleads, as a justification of his departure from the terms of his bargain, " the urgent want of labour in the colony ;" which "urgent want," his lordship presumes would induce the colonists to receive " a jap-, derate number of convicts" on any terms. 'To this sophistry there is an obvious reply. la the first place, that " urgent want," was felt in all its ferce at the time when the colonists agreed to the conditions offered in his Lord-

ship's despatch of 3rd September, 1847 ; and it was only because the want was urgent that they consented to. receive convicts even on these conditions. This fact puts down the plea at 'once. In the next place, his Lordship must have been well aware that long before his convicts could reach these shores, the " urgent want" would have ceased to exist. When the colonists closed the bargain, they had been without immigration for some years, nor had \k?y any reasonable prospect of its revival. ..!-Msk* tne scene is changed. Immigration «P pouring in by thousands ; and the only fear with many prudent men amongst us is, that the thing will be overdone — that men and women, boys and girls, will arrive in such numbers, and in such quick succession, as to outstrip our means of providing them with subsistence. And under these altered circumstances, convicts are to be thrust upon us / And to be thrust upon us on the pretext of our " urgent want of labour /" Our untainted labourers, our free immigrants, are not only to find, in all probability, a labour market overstocked with competitors of their own class, but are to find also the hateful competition of ticket-qf '-leave holders. For it turns out that we are not to have the quasi convicts called exiles, but bond fids felons holding tickets-of-leave. And for this purpose, we cannot he allowed to retain the dignity of a free colony, but must be again degraded, by the ' formality of an order in Council, to the level of a Penal Settlement ! And mark the consequences. Foremost amongst them is the check which will thereby be given to that gradual adjustment of the baiance of the sexas upon which we have so often dwelt with encouragement and hope. The convicts, under the present arrangement, must needs be unaccompanied by wives ; so that every man of them discharged upon our wharves will be an item on the wrong side of our social account, swelling the already dangerous preponderance of males over females. Next, as we are to relapse into the condition of a penal colony, we must again be saddled with the odious and expensive establishments appertaining to that condition. Our -convict department must be reorganized ; our police force must be augmented ; and our legislation must revive anti- British restraints upon the free members of our community. Next, as felons are once more to constitute a portion of'bur society, there must again be drawn a strict and impassable line between those who came hither in bondage, and those who came free, or were born in the land. Our little community must revive, not only the distinction between free and bond, but the -more rancogous*distinction between free and freed. And, though last not least, the character of the colony, as a place for respectable emigration, will be blown. This evil Earl Grey proposes to obviate by distributing the convicts amongst several of the colonies. But the colonies selected for this disreputable companionship are those which, compared with America, have the disadvantage of being remote from British shores. The consequence will be, that the western continent will become more than ever the favourite emporium of emigrant capital and labour. But how does his Lordship know that this notable scheme of convict fraternization will be submitted to t Van Diemen's Land, smarting under bitter experience, has solemnly determined to resist it to the uttermost. The Cape colony has done so too. New Zealand, we have no doubt, will be equally indignant and equally firm. Western Australia has no scope either for emigrants or convicts. Ceylon is in ruins. Mauritius is more fit for Asiatic than for Saxon labourers. If New South Wales, therefore, shall submit to this penal ■degradation, she must stand alone in her un--enviable glory. But will she submit? We shall see. Those who respond in the negative — and we fancy we hear a loud and vehement "No }" from every .part of the colony — must bestir themselves instantly. Not a moment is to be lost. Public meetings must be called in every town and in every district, to protest and petition against the Minister's breach of faith. — Sydney, of course, should set the example ; and we cannot doubt that steps will be j promptly taken for convening a great meeting of the anti-convict citizens. The Minis- j ter says, if we don't like his measure, he will put a stop to it. Let us leave him no room tp doubt on that score !

The Spencer has come on to this port from the Sandwich Islands in ballast, for the purpose we believe of loading for California. By her, we have received files of the Polynesian and Sandwich Island Neics to the 18th of January, containing late news from San Francisco, to the end of December, several vessels having arrived at Honolulu with large quantities of gold dust, which continued to be found in greater quantities than ever. One man it is said had dug up 12,000 dollars' worth in six days, and three others obtained in one day thirty-six pounds of pure metalt The sickly

season however having set in, a number of deaths had taken place at the gold field, and many were consequently flocking to the port to winter, hut of accommodation there was far from being sufficient for them. Provisions, clothing, and liquor were much in demand at San Francisco; but British vessels having foreign produce on board were not allowed to .break bulk. The representative of the Uniited States Government had been interdicted from holding intercourse with the government of the Sandwich Islands.— Sydney Morning Herald, March 12.