The Lyttelton Times. June 12, 1852.

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 75, 12 June 1852, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. June 12, 1852.

The authorities of Van Diemen's Land have published another general epistle to the neighbouring colonies, upon the subject !of transportation. If our readers will take the trouble to go into the Police office at Lyttelton, they will see the document pasted upon the walls—a gigantic sheet of paper, closely printed in small type, and headed, in large and conspicuous capitals, " EETTXEN OP ESCAPED CONVICTS." After this, who dares talk of agitation upon the subject of transportation ! The Government authorities themselves are the arch-agitators. No appeal, however stirring, which the League has ever put forward,-no eloquence, however impassioned, which the indignation of a colonial patriot has uttered—no proof, however convincing, which patient statistical investi-

gation has brought to light— has ever beenso utterly damning to the transportation system, as this periodical official notification. It is a masterpiece of evidence insult, and mockery. Evidence—for it parades the proof of the fact that transportation to Van Diemen's Land, is practically transportation to all the colonies ; that when England solemnly vowed to discontinue sending her felons to most of the Australian colonies, it was not honestly intended to relieve them from the reception of vice, but simply to adopt a process of filtration, by which they, should still receive the most daring and abandoned of the criminals of Britain. But the insult offered by this document is no less remarkable. At a time when the feelings of the colonists are stung to the very quick by a keen sense of the deep wrongs which they have long sustained at the hands of the mother country ; this enormous placard is set forth to stare them in the face in every hall of justice throughout the colonial empire, as a perpetual reminder, that let them complain, remonstrate, petition, as they will, there is one act of justice at all events which the tribunals of law cannot afford, one act of oppression from which their constitutional rights cannot protect them; that, come what may, their homes and their countries shall still remain the predestinated haunts of the prowling miscreants, whom England has driven from her shores.

But the mockery of this half-yearly sheet surpasses even its insult. It has always been a matter of notoriety that the published list of escaped convicts, voluminous, as it j is, bears but a small proportion to ; the real number of the criminals whom the grasp of justice, has been unable to retain in the condition of merited slavery. Within the last few months, however, the publication of such a list at all, is a miserable delusion. The sudden discovery of the mines in Australia, like the eruption of a volcano, pouring its streams of golden lava over her fields, whilst it is fertilizing her soil with untold sources of national greatness and prosperity, is at the same time subverting and destroying the existing institutions and relations of society. Nature has opened a great gambling table whose attractiveness is irresistible to a class of men, whose previous life has wholly unfitted them for the steady and sober avocations of ordinary labour. With such a point of attraction in their neighbourhood, the authorities of Tasmania must become utterly paralyzed in the attempts to restrain the escape of convicts, and, if their returns are now to have the credit of truth, their whole time must be occupied in recording the flight of prisoners, whom an army could not retain. What shall we say then to the infatuation of a minister who can see in this state otf affairs, nothing but a fresh inducement for prolonging the system of transportation? Is it credible that Earl Grey, in his interview with Mr. King, the Delegate from Victoria, should have actually referred to the discovery of the gold mines as a reason for continuing this odious and atrocious system? We should not have credited it, were it not that Mr. King's "minutes of his - conversation with the minister, had actually been corrected by Earl Grey's own hand, and, therefore, bear the stamp of his aiuho-

rity. But Earl Grey has the felicitous art of doing, and saying the most offensive things in the most offensive manner : it is the secret of the intense hatred which the very mention of his name arouses in a colonial mind. It was not enough that he should tell Mr. King that her Majesty's government had determined not to discontinue *! transportation,—which he might have defended by the obvious reason that he did not know what else to do with the criminals sentenced in the English courts—but the wicked perversity of the Minister was not satisfied with this; instead of stooping to defend, he at once glories in his policy, and insults his opponents. He says — "The criminals now sent out would be found at the termination of their punishment a very much better class of men than those formerly transported without any previous training, and then still further corrupted by being placed in the probationary gangs. Those now sent out> after having passed through the discipline of Pentonville and Portland, would indeed, in many instances, be found to bear a very favour-, able comparison with the free emigrants who went out under the bounty system." Words pregnant with sad and fatal results. It is perhaps impossible that a sentence could have been framed with more spiteful ingenuity to convey the deepest mortification, to awake the most lasting indignation, in all ranks and classes of the colonial empire. And when, in future times, England shall look back upon the period when she was shorn of the last and greatest of her free colonial possessions, how much will she not attribute to the evil passions of a bad minister who first provoked the contest! T -■-'■''- But while the Minister is declaring his determination that the policy of England shall not be revoked, it is evident that he himself foresees its termination. For we are told an expedition is already set on foot to discover some new locality where convict . settlements may be formed. A new pest house is to be built up in these seas, and it is said that the Feejee islands are the spot upon which the evil eye has looked But this, too, will be a hopeless experiment, and, after a vast expenditure of the national wealth in the formation of a new colony of criminals, England will find that long before it has repaid the cost, it will be wrested from her grasp. No convict settlement will be tolerated in these seas. If Australia once emancipates herself from this degrading thraldom, she will be strong enough to protect herself from the continuance of such an intolerable nuisance in her vicinity. Now all these reflections bring us to the same conclusion at which we hinted in our last number. The rapid alienation which appears to be going on in the colonial mind, from its former esteem and respect for the mother country, cannot but forewarn us of an impending change. Every thinking man, deeply as he may deplore such an event, cannot but contemplate the time when the Australian Kmpire will become separate from England, and all whose political, commercial, or social interests may be affected by the change, would do well to think occasionally of the part which it may become them to take in the struggle.