family, and the thought of his little ones being scattered amidst a vicious and degraded community;-while his personal pride equally revolts against his own association with such, and their frequently successful competition with him for beneficial employment. None of these feelings, and but little even of his incapacity, are shared by the more reckless and dissolute of his companions, who have probably already experienced many changes, and are so much the better prepared to accommodate themselves to more.

In this case, then, it appears to me, that Government at present does too much at the beginning,-and that it is pressingly required to do a great deal more at the end. I do not think that any agents should be employed at home to enlist emigrants. When a fixed number is to be made up at fixed periods, there will always be unworthy admitted ;—and the mere circumstance of people being thus collected, and cared for, and marshalled, and scrutinized, by a Government officer, impairs their independent feelings and deteriorates them. But every Collector of Customs in the kingdom should be authorized to allow a certain drawback, equivalent to a free passage, to every emigrant of a particular description proceeding to certain fixed Colonies, between which and the Mother Country a bridge would be thus maintained, without, however, the Government undertaking to find passengers to cross it. And, on the other hand, the bridge being thus built, the Government is bound to see that it shall not lead to destruction-that the Colonies are fit to receive free laboring emigrants without corrupting them. This the Penal Colonies cannot do at present; but this they

soon could do were only those changes made in the system of managing convicts there, which have been already fully detailed,-and their labor-markets were thus restored to a healthy and natural state, without the presence in it of domestic slaves, or slave-incidents.

THOUGHTS ON THE INTRODUCTION OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENTS INTO THE PENAL COLONIES

IN AUSTRALIA.*

The present charter of the Penal Colonies being about to expire, and it being generally understood that the question of extending to them representative Governments is under the serious consideration of the Ministers of the Crown, I take the liberty of bringing together a few thoughts on this subject, suggested by a personal knowledge of some of our Colonies, and a little reading and reflection on the political state of them all. So many advantages attend a representative Government,

*This Paper was written in April 1836, before I left England, and when the growing troubles in Canada, and the approaching termination of the Charter of these Colonies began to fix attention somewhat closely there on the questions which it attempts to discuss. The alterations made in it since are few and unimportant, and chiefly appear in the form of notes.

Next to a change in the system of convict management in these Colonies, they appear to me to be more in want of Representative Governments than of any other political improvement. They want, in truth, to shake off the taint of discretionary administration in whatever shape, and whether exercised by themselves on others, or by others on them; and they ought to be made as much as possible to assist in bringing about such a change in their domestic polity themselves, that they may be made early familiar with the discussion of the principles involved in it.

For this purpose it seems to me extremely desirable that their assent, as well as mere submission, should, if possible, be obtained to any change that may be made in their convict system ;—and, provided that

-it has been so successful in England, and is consequently so popular with Englishmen and their descendants, that it is difficult not to approve generally of its

change abolish domestic slavery, and substitute for it the ordinary relations between masters and servants, and consequently the ordinary aspect of society, in free states, a representative system of government should early follow, that the local communities may themselves share in the task of accommodating the local laws to the new state of things. With a right apparatus for morally influencing both free and bond, and a little tact and patience in those to whom the task of accomplishing the entire change may be confided, not only will the process, I am persuaded, be found perfectly safe and easy, but the result, I venture to predict, will be one of the most interesting and instructive within the whole compass of morals or administration.

When I first witnessed the vehemence, impetuosity, and peremptory bearing of the Van Diemen's Land public on every trifling occasion of difference of opinion, however highly I thought of many of its members individually, I did not consider it, as a body, fit to be trusted with a strong direct controul over its government. But as I gradually appreciated more and more justly the virulence of that multiform poison to which it has been so long subjected, and to which, for many reasons, I have not attempted in this volume to do any thing like full justice-(for I have only sought to expose principles, although the individuals administering evil ones cannot themselves altogether escape their contaminating influence),—my opinions became correspondingly modified ;—and I now think that, take away the continued influence of that poison, not only might the communities of the Penal Colonies be trusted with direct political power with the greatest safety, but also that such a trust would eminently conduce to their rapid and complete recovery from whatever impress of the contagion they at present certainly bear.

Much must depend, especially at first, on the perfection that may be given to the moral apparatus by which the "sic vola, sic jubeo" of the present system, whether addressed by the government towards the free, or by the free towards the bond, shall be substituted. But, with reverence be the simile used, Free Institutions are like the Holy Sacrament, it is not necesssary to withhold them till men are worthy of them, for their possession shortly makes worthy. And the wealth, patriotism, and intelligence of the Settlers in the Penal Colonies may safely be trusted not long to remain wrong when enabled to manifest their opinions in action, however pertinaciously they sometimes appear to maintain error in mere argument.

Y

introduction almost every where. Yet it certainly has not uniformly worked smoothly in the British Colonies; and some of the inconveniences arising from it are at this moment sensibly felt in one of the most important of them (Canada). How does this happen, then? What have been the circumstances through which it has thus failed in uniformly producing loyalty and harmony? And can any means be devised by which an opposite result may be secured in a new case?

To me it appears that the error in most, if not all our Colonies, has been that the example of Mixed Monarchy in the mother country, on which the several experiments have been founded, has not been followed out with sufficient exactness. The extreme parts which enter into the composition of Society and Government in England have been given;-but the intermediate links by which they are made at home to work harmoniously have been omitted. Monarchy and democracy have been brought into naked contact; and they have not agreed just in consequence of this crude juxtaposition. The gradations of civil rank have been few in the Colonies; and the prizes held out in them to those who might recommend themselves to the favor of the Local Governments have been equally few. Governors have seldom had either honors or employments at their disposal with which to operate on the natural feelings of the more active resident population ;—or when they have had them, they have not been sufficiently alive to the importance of giving them this destination. The members of their Executive Councils, in particular, have been, for the most part, such ex-officio,--or, at all events, they have held office by a totally different, and much more secure, tenure, than