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Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 142, 18 May 1932, Page 7

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FOUND IN ENGLAND. PETITION BY COLONISTS. A remarkable document in connection with the early history of Australia, tlie story of which lias not yet been fully told, has been presented to the Mitchell Library, Sydney, through the Agent-General for New South Wales (Mr A. C. Willis) bv Mrs Arthur Wardle, an Englishwoman, who recently bought an old house at Ashcombe Park, near Leek, Staffordshire, with tlie effects.

When making an inventory, Mrs Wardle discovered in a tin box, in which it was originally sent from Australia, a petition by colonists, to “Tho Right Honourable Lords, Spiritual and Temporal, of the United. Kingdom, in Parliament assembled, this humble petition of the inhabitants of the Australasian colonies, New South Wales, Victoria, .Van Dieman’s Land, South Australia, and New Zealand,” emphasising the horrors of transportation, and injustice suffered in the colonies, and appealing for a cessation of the sending of convicts to Van Dieman’s Land. PROBABLE DATE 1850.

The petition, apparently undated, appealed to Parliament to give effect to Earl Grey’s undertaking of August 7, 1848, that no more convicts should be sent to Van Dieman’s Land, so that the date was approximately 1850. The petition is beautifully copperplated and is in- perfect condition. A scroll, 15 feet long, containing thousands of names, is still attached, many of the signatories apparently being South Australians. How the document went from the archives of Downing Street to Staffordshire and where it has been for the past 80 years, is at present not explained.