usand persons released from the prisons of
France were so intolerable, what must be the condition of England with
sixty thousand expirees then settled in the colonies? Van Diemen's Land
was always a penal colony, and he saw no reason that it should be
otherwise. Earl Grey warmly censured this policy, and complained "that
no hope of relief from the frightful evils of transportation had been
afforded." He stated that he was "prepared to express an opinion that
transportation should be got rid of. He had long entertained that
opinion, and had never seen the arguments of the Archbishop of Dublin
refuted." A duplicate of this petition, presented to the Commons, was
followed by the motion of Mr. Ewart, "That it is inexpedient to make Van
Diemen's Land the sole receptacle of convicts, and that transportation
be abolished, except as a supplement to penal discipline" (May, 1846).
The day chosen was inauspicious. The "house" was gone to the Epsom
races. Mr. Hudson, the railway king, not better employed, stumbled into
the chapel of St. Stephen, and counted out the members. Mr. Ewart
renewed his motion (July 6). A few days before Earl Grey and Mr. Hawes
had obtained the command of the colonies, they admitted the facts of the
petition, and promised redress. The liberal principles avowed by the new
government reassured the friends of Van Diemen's Land. Mr. Gladstone had
determined to arrest the influx of convicts for two years: this was
approved by his successor. In quashing the North Australian colony, Earl
Grey stated his dissent from the principles on which it had been founded
(September 30, 1846). The whigs ever expressed a decided abhorrence of
penal colonisation and the collection of masses cradled in the
traditions of crime. When taunted with this accumulation in Van Diemen's
Land as the result of his policy of 1840, Lord John Russell
explained:--"As to the sending of convicts to Van Diemen's Land, he had
intended to adopt the policy recommended in the work of the Archbishop
of Dublin. Had his plan been carried out, instead of 4,000 convicts sent
to Van Diemen's Land there would not have been more than five or six
hundred."

When Earl Grey instructed Sir William Denison in reference to certain
reforms, he intimated his expectation that transportation would
terminate. Soon after Sir William Denison addressed to the magistrates
of the territory a series of enquiries (March, 1847), of which the first
was awfully momentous. "Do yo