ld as formerly be allowed in compensation.[236]

So late as August, 1844, the secretary of state refused to entertain the
claim for relief. He stated that the colony would be obliged to expend a
sum nearly equal, although all the convicts were withdrawn; for their
sakes, he said, the island was colonised; they constituted the working
population; and he added that in the military and naval protection, the
support of the unemployed convict, and the capital and cheap labor
poured into the colony, a fair proportion of expenditure was borne by
the crown.

Pressed by extraordinary difficulties, Wilmot again[237] urged the
injustice of these conclusions. He complained that not only India,
China, and the Cape of Good Hope, but New South Wales, were pouring in
felons of the worst description, who, as pass-holders, occasioned a vast
outlay for the suppression of crime. He told his lordship that for
several years the land fund had totally failed, while the expenses of
police and gaols, of judges and witnesses, had risen to L50,000. At this
time the number of arrivals was five thousand annually, sent from every
colony and dependency of the empire, as well as from the United Kingdom.
There were between three and four thousand pass-holders unemployed,
7,000 in private service, 6,000 about to emerge from the gangs, 8,000
with tickets-of-leave or conditional pardons, and in all more than
30,000 unqualified to quit the island without the consent of the
crown.[238]

It is impossible to read these representations without feeling indignant
at the nobleman who suffered the representative of the Queen to struggle
with difficulties so manifold and great,--who left him to the
alternative of breaking through positive prohibitions or of incurring
popular distrust and aversion. To this delay the governor owed much of
the opposition he suffered, and the imperial government inconveniences
of lasting consequence. Nothing was conceded to justice--nothing to
entreaty; and the secretary of state yielded at last as despotism must
ever yield,--without merit and without thanks.

The whole change in the details of the convict department was marked by
a spirit eminently opposed to the colonial welfare. With singular
acuteness and perspicuity Lord Stanley described the former systems as
subject to local influence and subservient to local ends. Every
governor, he alleged, was under a strong bias in favor of expense, as
the patron of a multitude of officia