Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 1.djvu/680

1)56 AN AMERICAN COLONIST 1788 Offioera advised to sit and apply for inaemnity. regulation while on shore in any part of his Majesty's dominions, and hold a Court-martial under the warrant of his excellency the Governor of New South Wales. But when I consider the time that must elapse before a remedy can be applied, when I consider how much his Majesty's service may and must suffer from the want of a tribunal to which officers should be amenable, when I consider that although the strict letter of the law is against their sitting, it has been clearly the intention of every branch and department of his Majesty's Go- vernment that there should be such a tribunal in this country, I am of opinion that, waving the privilege of being assembled in conformity with their own Act of Parliament, they should sit under the authority of the King's Commission and Governor of this territory, throwing themselves, with the strong plea of neces- sity, on the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty for procuring them an indemnification for their having so acted. David Collins, Judge- Advocate. AN AMERICAN COLONIST ON TRANSPORTATION. Public opinion in the American colonies. To show the mischievous effect of the transportation system in America, the author of the History of New York, written in 1756, quoted a paper published in a local periodical called The Inde- pendent Reflector, in which the writer expressed the views of the colonists on the subject with considerable force and feeling. His statements shew three things clearly : — (1) that the number of convicts annually transported to the American colonies was very large ; (2) that the colonies were brought into so much dis- credit by that means among all classes in Great Britain and Ireland, that emigration was greatly discouraged ; and (3), that the colonists looked upon the system with disgust, and strongly protested against it. " It is too well known that in pursuance of divers Acts of Par liament, great numbers of felons who have forfeited their lives to the public for the most atrocious crimes, are annually trans- transported, ported from home to these plantations. Very surprising, one would think, that thieves, burglars, pickpockets, and cut-purses, and a herd of the most flagitious banditti upon earth, should be sent as agreeable companions to us ! That the supreme Legisla- Great numbers annually Digitized by Google