Page:Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land.djvu/36

 won the colony its richly deserved Representative government. In a political point of view, the history of this intermediate epoch is replete with facts of the deepest interest to the philosopher and the statesman; affording, in many instances, an insight into the curious processes attending the elaboration of social schemes, and corroborating in others, what has been long ago proved to be the case, viz. that the most captivating theories are not always the most practicable and successful, and that a measure the least dependent on theories, but which results from, and is subservient to, the actual exigencies of society, never fails to promote its welfare. Thus the system of transportation, which was denounced by European politicians and moralists, as fraught with mischief and ruin to society, because inconsistent with their theories and maxims of criminal legislation and political morality, has succeeded to a certainty as well ascertained as any circumstance may be by human experience; and has succeeded in spite of bitter invective, plausible reasoning, unmeasured censure; and, strange to say, through the very means which theory pointed out as having a most dangerous tendency, namely, the encouraging of free men to emigrate into a penal colony, and the encouraging of those in bond to industry and to the acquisition of property. To enter at large into the benefits of transportation combined with free emigration; to point out the calumnies and wilful misrepresentations, or the unintentional, but not less flagrant misconceptions to which this question has exposed New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land; to attempt to remove the ridiculous prejudices, or the mistaken impressions, of the mother country in respect to the true state of these colonies; and, lastly, to render justice to the