convicts, while many of the remainder were free only by pardon or servitude. In the same year no less than 171338 cases of offence of some kind or other were proceeded with before the magistrates. After such a description, it is pleasant to be able to record that the colony has notably improved since that date. With the cessation of transportation, the old name of Van Dieman's Land has been buried, with all its convict associations; and fair Tasmania, beauteous in scenery and genial in climate almost beyond compeer, has with her new name sprung into a new existence.
3. Retrospect of Victoria, South Australia, and Queensland.
But I must hasten over this part of my subject. Victoria, which we found so oppressed a few years ago as to show for the one year, 1853, reconvictions of old British offenders to the number of 554 in a relatively small population of 200,000, is so much improved a few years after, as to exhibit only 24 such convictions for the year 1862, the population meanwhile having nearly trebled. The proportion of other convictions has also materially diminished. South Australia, by the same test of convictions, shows a decided diminution in the ratio of crime during the ten years 1853-62. During part of that interval, the colony remained stationary, or even retrogressive, in its crime-ratio, a circumstance attributable to the convict immigration from West Australia. But that source of crime being greatly restricted by the colony's measures of defensive legislation in 1857,[1] improvement is soon afterwards manifest, and the proportion in 1861-62, is nearly 50 per cent, less than it was about eight years previously. Queensland appears to have effected the same encouraging degree of progress during the shorter space of four years, 1859-62. In this last colony, however, where the increase of the population is so rapid, that about one-half consists of the new immigrants of the preceding two or three years, we can hardly as yet look for reliable data on this question.
IX.—Case of West Australia.
I now turn to a different picture—the colony of West Australia. The actual present condition of that colony, and the degree of social injury she inflicts on her eastern sisters by the continuance of the convict system, have been questions of differing and somewhat angry statement. The colony was not of convict foundation, like New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land; but it had comparatively few natural resources, and thus, poor and slow of growth, it accepted the convicts and the imperial expenditure that was to accompany them, on the business principle that all custom that pays should be made
- ↑ See Appendix A.
