the Crown now suffers, be laid before the English people, and a cry will be heard from Land’s End to the opposite shore, “transportation shall cease because it degrades the British name.” (Cheers.) The injuries resulting from transportation to the colony are various.  A gentleman, however eminent his station and virtues, going to a distant part of the world must cautiously suppress the fact, that he came from Van Diemen’s Land, or even this quarter of the globe. (Hear, hear.) Yes, Sir, our sons, who have quitted this colony in search of a home denied them in the land of their birth, have been compelled to conceal the place from which they came, and to drop into the box, by stealth, those letters which were to relieve parental anxiety, and express their filial affection.  And is this to be for ever endured?  Shall our own children never know the pleasure and pride of patriotism?  Shall we not ask all the colonies of the Australian empire to aid us in our struggle?  Shall we not confide in the justice of Australasia?

When it is said that England cannot support 4,000 or 5,000 offenders the question naturally occurs:  What has she not done?  Did not England for her Continental wars incur a debt of L800,000,000:  did she not give L20,000,000 to free her West India slaves; did she not expend L7,000,000 to combat the famine of Ireland?  Is not the proposed expenditure for the National Executive of the present year an evidence of her boundless opulence?  And yet to save a trifling outlay compared with the injustice now done, the representative of Her Majesty is compelled to carry about under his skirts a parcel of convictism; to deposit these tokens of imperial interest he is driven to have recourse to artifice, trickery and falsehood. (Hear, hear.) As England glories in her past history, and has found means to keep afloat that flag which has never been lowered; so she must find means to carry on a nobler struggle with her own poverty and crime.  Hitherto, Van Diemen’s Land has not been heard at home; but if by the united voices of the other colonies, a sort of telegraphic communication can be opened with Britain, if a speaking trumpet be formed, we shall be heard.  When he (Mr. West) heard that Ministers had departed from their promise that transportation should cease, he was astonished and desponding—­he thought that if a promise so solemnly given could be so recklessly broken, hope was delusion.  But as in the moral, so it is in the political world.  The Divine Being frequently ordains that good shall arise out of apparent evils; that a tedious delay shall make the remedy more perfect.  Had we been relieved when Ministers promised; then, transportation to the other colonies would have been continued, and its evils accumulate there. (Hear, hear.) When it was proposed that all the colonies should receive a share of convicts, all things considered, he, (the speaker) for one could not have then objected to Van Diemen’s Land being joined in the co-partnery.  Had such been the case a century might have elapsed before the reproach of convictism had been removed from this hemisphere.  But the refusal of the other colonies occasioned by the injuries inflicted on this, has roused us all into action, and now all declare that not a man, no, not one—­in fetters shall be landed in Australia. (Tremendous cheering.)