supposed connection between the criminals
and insurgents of France alarmed the aristocracy, and disposed them to
cling to transportation. The Bishop of Tasmania bore testimony to its
colonial mischief. Lord Brougham endeavored to draw admissions favorable
to his views with professional acuteness; but he was foiled, and the
bishop pronounced the solemn warning that those who cast a prisoner,
especially a woman, into a community where criminal principles prevail,
pronounce a sentence for both worlds.

The Tasmanian colonists were soon instructed by the press that the
theory of dispersion was exploded. They were astonished to find fresh
convict vessels hovering on their shores; but more still were they
amazed to learn that Earl Grey seriously professed that by sending all
the convicts to Van Diemen's Land he substantially realised dispersion.
He indeed promised to provide an equal amount of emigration, but they
knew that these projects were illusive. They had before them the
addition of convict ticket holders, by hundreds, to thousands and tens
of thousands already in the colony; there to struggle with their
predecessors for bread. Such was the prospect of 1848.

SECTION IV.

"I hope," said Lord John Russell, "that when the house does come
seriously to consider any bill having the question of transportation
directly in view, it will consider the benefit of the colonies as well
as of the mother country. I own I think it has been too much the custom
both to pass acts imposing the penalty of transportation with a view
rather to the convenience of this country than to the reformation of
persons known to be of vicious habits, or to the interest of the
colonies to which they were sent. We are bound to consider those
interests likewise. We are bound when we are planting provinces, perhaps
what may in future time be empires, to endeavour that they should not be
merely seats of malefactors and of convicts, but communities fitted to
set an example of virtue and happiness, and not to make plantations, as
Lord Bacon says, of the scum of the land" (June, 1847). Such were the
sentiments of the prime minister on penal colonisation. The secretary of
the home department and the secretary for the colonies had been equally
explicit. Could they really believe their own doctrine, when their
practice was exactly opposite to its plainest dictates?

The revolution in the policy of the crown everywhere excited
astonishment and indignat