ing
trumpet be formed, we shall be heard. When he (Mr. West) heard that
Ministers had departed from their promise that transportation should
cease, he was astonished and desponding--he thought that if a promise so
solemnly given could be so recklessly broken, hope was delusion. But as
in the moral, so it is in the political world. The Divine Being
frequently ordains that good shall arise out of apparent evils; that a
tedious delay shall make the remedy more perfect. Had we been relieved
when Ministers promised; then, transportation to the other colonies
would have been continued, and its evils accumulate there. (Hear, hear.)
When it was proposed that all the colonies should receive a share of
convicts, all things considered, he, (the speaker) for one could not
have then objected to Van Diemen's Land being joined in the co-partnery.
Had such been the case a century might have elapsed before the reproach
of convictism had been removed from this hemisphere. But the refusal of
the other colonies occasioned by the injuries inflicted on this, has
roused us all into action, and now all declare that not a man, no, not
one--in fetters shall be landed in Australia. (Tremendous cheering.)

If an unfortunate offender becomes as a penitent desirous of amending
his life, and disposed to conform to the usages, and claims of honest
society, he will find no man here spitefully to remind him of his former
errors. But if he is brought wearing the badge of disgrace we will not
have him. We will say to the British Government "Until you can with
safety discharge him into your community, he shall not enter ours."
(Loud Cheers.) This is the righteous principle upon which we have taken
our stand. Whilst we were disputing among ourselves who should bear the
load, we were likely to be sacrificed by our ungenerous divisions. But
we have now a new principle; and a principle is a wedge--if sufficient
force is applied, every obstacle will be riven into shivers. We now say
that no man should be an involuntary gaoler, much less shall the
inhabitants of these colonies be the penal slaves and gaolers of the
British Empire. (Cheers.) We assert that a community should deal with
its own crime, at least so deal with it that in its disposal it shall
not injure those who never offended--so at least that the honest and
industrious labourer should not be brought into unfavourable comparison
and competition with the hardened criminal, so that, at all events our
s