cover what profit New South Wales brought the mother country. He held of course in the most extreme sense the theory that from the point of view of economics, colonial expansion was utterly mistaken.[1] After a short resumé of the economic argument he thus summarised the position.
"Thus then stands the real account of profit and loss in respect of Colonies in general. Colonies in general yield no advantage to the mother country, because their produce is never obtained without an equivalent sacrifice, for which equal value might have been obtained elsewhere. The particular Colony here in question yields no advantage to the mother country, and for a reason still more simple—because it yields no produce."
The only real acquisition, he concluded, was two hundred and fifty new-discovered plants, "but plants, my Lord, as well as gold, may be bought too dear. … In return for so many choice and physical plants, transplanted from the Colony, there is one plant, though it be but a metaphorical one, which has been planted in the Colony … and that is—the plant of military despotism."
It was this form of Government which he analysed in the Plea for the Constitution in the following year.[2]
He discussed very minutely the illegal assumption of legislative powers, powers however, which he admitted had necessarily been exercised in the beginning and on many occasions in a praiseworthy manner. No Colony, he said, had ever started so badly equipped with legal rights. To give a Royal Charter would indeed have been impossible, for to a charter there were needed two parties and a forced exile, a convicted criminal could not be one of them.
"Instructions and counter-instructions, insinuations and counter-insinuations," he wrote, in a characteristic passage, "instructions in form and instructions not in form; despotism
- ↑ See the brilliant little pamphlet, "Emancipate your Colonies," written, 1793, first published for sale, 1830.
- ↑ The full title was A plea for the Constitution, shewing the Enormities committed to the oppression of British Subjects Innocent as well as Guilty in Breach of Magna Charta, The Petition of Right, The Habeas Corpus Act, and the Bill of Right; so likewise of the Several Transportation Acts; in and by the Design, Foundation and Government of Penal Colony of New South Wales: including an Inquiry into the Right of the Crown to legislate without Parliament in Trinidad and other British Colonies.
