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Opposition to Transportation, and Defensive Legislation of the Colonies.

There was no combined movement in the colonies against the convict system until the year 1850, when the Australasian Anti-transportation League was commenced. It originated in Tasmania, and was inaugurated at Melbourne in the year following. This body was dissolved two years afterwards, under prospects that promised the full accomplishment of the object it had in view. In February, 1853, the then Secretary for the Colonies, the Duke of Newcastle, had intimated to Parliament that it was the intention of the Government to abandon the transportation system, which was to be given up at once as regarded Van Dieman's Laud, and a few years later as regarded West Australia. But as these expectations have remained unfulfilled, the League has been reconstituted in Victoria; the colonists having been stimulated to this course by the Report of the late Royal Commission, which recommended, instead of the expected cessation, a greatly increased number of convicts being sent to West Australia. The League had met with general support in the colony, and has announced that it will fight out this battle with the mother country by the aid of all the weapons that English law and liberty allow it, and that the interests of the colonial societies demand.

Case of Victoria.

Already the colonies have exemplified this phraseology by their defensive legislation. Under the auspices of the earlier League, Victoria passed the Convicts' Prevention Act of 1852, an extreme measure, extemporised for the emergencies of the time with reference to the convict influx from Van Dieman's Land, that followed on the discovery of the goldfields. The Act was mainly designed to checkmate the "conditional pardon" system, by means of which the adjacent penal colony sought to relieve itself, tinder that form of pardon, the convicts received permission to leave Van Dieman's Land, but not to return to England, and of course they went straight to Victoria. By the terms of the Act, the vessel bringing these persons was liable to heavy fine, and the persons themselves could be seized on board, and either imprisoned for three years or returned to the colony whence they came, notwithstanding the so-called Queen's pardon and the royal prerogative. The colony took the equitable ground that persons unfit to enter England had no right to enter Victoria.

This cauterising measure was afterwards extended so as to exclude from Victoria the convict class for three years after they had received even full and free pardons. Indeed, a recent inquiry in the colony into the present state of the law on the subject, seems to indicate that any two magistrates, on proof shown as to a felony committed elsewhere, may send the convict back to the place where his crime was committed. This law, indeed, had lately a near chance of being brought into actual exercise, as a proposition had been brought forward in the Victoria Legislature, and not without influential support, to retransport to England a number of West Australian convicts. It had been ascertained that the police of Victoria and of the adjacent colonies had their eyes upon a very considerable list; and the temptation was strong upon the colonists to refute, by so practical a demonstration, the oft-repeated assertion that West Australia and her convicts were too isolated and remote to endanger the eastern colonies.

Case of South Australia.

The preventive and extraditionary act which Victoria passed in order to secure herself against Van Dieman's Land, was passed five years afterwards, namely, in 1857, by South Australia, to protect that colony against the convict influx from West Australia. The latter colony had caused little alarm to its neighbours until towards the year 1855, by which time the convicts in considerable numbers were acquiring their freedom. In that year there were 269 arrivals of all kinds from