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Wellington Independent, Volume V, Issue 449, 30 January 1850, Page 2

By the William. Alfred, Capt. Tinley, which vessel arrived from Port Jackson on Sunday morning, we have received Sydney papers to the 12th January, and Cape of Good Hope news to the beginning of September. At Sydney there was still some excitement on the convict question, but an order in Council had passed declaring New South Wales, Norfolk Island, Van Diemen's Land, and the Cape of Good Hope places to which convicted felons are to be sent. The Sydney election had terminated in the return.of Dr. Bland. It passed over almost in silence—scarcely one-half of the electors appearing at the poll.

At the Cape the war of right against might was being steadily persevered in. The Cape has been declared a Penal settlement, but its inhabitants have assumed an attitude at once manly and determined A strong power like England can never be justified in oppressing a weak community, and whatever the Imperial Government may do, they have no more right to transport -their felons to the Cape and to throw them ashore as free men, than the colonists of the Cape have to introduce into England, and set at large, a cargo of wild beasts—such as lions, tigers, &c. Editors of English newspapers, as the Times for instance, may preach up the right of Government to land convicts free in any of the colonies. Editors of Colonial newspapers may return the complimentand contend that Irish and Scotch criminals should be landed, as free men, in London, and English criminals in the capitals of Ireland and Scotland. The cutthroats and incendiaries of Tipperary, and the footpads and housebreakers of Scotland would, after a few months probation, as " Exiles," prove useful " citizens " of London, whilst English rogues and vagabonds would no doubt be welcome additions to Edinburgh and Dublin Society. The Times will, as a matter of course, laugh at such nonsense, but the colonies are, or should be, integral parts of the Empire. If not treated so, they will ultimately resist a power which is an oppressive rather than a paternal one The colonies in the Southern Hemisphere are of some little moment to the mother-country—let the mother-country be cautious of pushing injustice to an extreme. The Cape colonists are bent upon legal resistance—from one step to the other there is but a simple barrier. I An armed resistance on the part of the incensed Anglo-Saxon Africans will cause aii expenditure of blood and treasure which the parent state cannot afford; and such a resistance would prove that England can, after all the boasts uttered by her children, oppress the weak as well a,s Austria and Russia, and such an opinion, gaining ground in the colonies, would ultimately prove her downfall. Euglishmen in the colonies should no more be imposed upon than Englishmen in England, Ireland, or Scotland.