prising colonists," and that the supply of labour was due, not to his commissioners, but to the English distress and Irish famine. But in order that those not conversant with colonial affairs may not be imposed upon by the strenuous efforts of Lord Grey to extenuate a course of policy which, if pardonable in a novice, is quite unpardonable in a statesman, we venture on the following parallel passage from English History:—
An administration, of which Earl Grey formed one, offered to compromise the corn-law question by offering an 8s. duty. That offer was rejected by the agricultural interest in 1842; while in 1848 nothing less than the total and immediate abolition would satisfy those who would once willingly have accepted the 8s. compromise, those who in 1842 had rejected it disdainfully would have been only too willing to accept it. In the same way the party who carried the repeal of the corn laws, was composed of some who sincerely approved of it on moral and political grounds, others who were chiefly moved by the prospect of increased trade, and others who saw in the movement personal and political advantages and the way to the enjoyment of extravagant official salaries.[1]
It would be difficult to find two passages in cotemporary history more alike. When Earl Grey reads colonial events with such singular one-sidedness, it is not surprising that he did not observe that the party in favour of the renewal of transportation was composed of those whose income would be increased by hundreds and thousands per annum by a reduction of the price of labour to £16 per annum—who would never be brought in contact with the convict element—who could afford free butlers and ladies' maids—whose sons would not associate and whose daughters would not be entrapped into marriage with Pentonville exiles or ticket-of-leavers.
The obnoxious order in council making New South Wales a penal colony was, after a brief contest, withdrawn, but the seed of agitation had been sown, the anti-transportation league, embracing all the Australian colonies and Van Diemen's Land, had been organised. The gold discoveries proved to every one, except to the son and heir of the great man who carried the Reform Bill, that transportation was not only odious to the colonists but absurd as a punishment. Within the present year it has been abolished by the Duke of Newcastle. But Earl Grey, like his countryman, the gallant Whittington, still fights upon his stumps, and endeavours to perpetuate the bitter dislike with which his official career was regarded in the colonies, by proclaiming
- ↑ We do not consider that the secretaries of state are by any means extravagantly paid, but it is very likely that a colonist might. And we do not agree -with Earl Grey that the wages of colonial labourers are to be measured by a Northumberland standard, for what is extravagant in England is moderate in a new country.
