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TRANSPORTATION

from the past mismanagement of the transportation system be neutralized, and the future efficiency of that species of punishment promoted and secured. By adopting the course I have recommended for this purpose, it is practicable for the British government to render the infliction of that punishment subservient in the highest degree to the progress of colonization on the Australian continent, and to the rapid increase of the commercial prosperity of the empire; while, on the other hand, it is equally practicable to render the progress of Australian colonization subservient in the same degree to the growth and establishment of that powerful moral influence which alone will secure the ultimate reformation of the criminal.

If His Majesty's government should refuse to listen to this voice from the wilderness of Australia, under the idea that the present system of management in regard to the disposal of transported criminals in New South Wales can be indefinitely continued, they will, in all likelihood, find themselves mistaken much sooner than they anticipate. The intolerable expense and the moral abominations of that preposterous system, both of which are increasing enormously every year, are already exciting general impatience and deep disgust among the reputable classes of colonial society; and if these classes, who are now rapidly