Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/186

 On the 13th of October a committee of the Legislative Council was appointed, on the motion of Mr. Went worth, which contained, of ten members, five squatters and two colonial officials.

The first act of this committee was to meet and decide that it was not expedient at that late period of the session to take any evidence as to the question in Mr. Gladstone's letter "Whether a modified and carefully-regulated introduction of convict labourers will be in accordance with the general sense of the colony." Accordingly they confined their labours to inquiring from the employers of labour whether they would like a renewal of transportation that is to say, cheap labour they were unanimously answered in the affirmative, provided the transportation was accompanied with certain precautions which they mentioned and inquiring from the police magistrates in what manner and on what terms such transportation ought to be renewed. Although while the committee was sitting, a number of petitions against the renewal of transportation were presented, no witnesses holding the opinions of the petitioners were examined.

Among other witnesses called was Captain J. Innes, stipendiary magistrate at the convict barracks, and superintendent of irongangs, a gentleman whose office and position alike secured him from any sentimental terror of convictism, and induced him to acquiesce as much as possible in the views of those home authorities from whom he received his appointment. But Captain Innes only ventured to propose, as the terms on which the colony should consent to receive a limited number of prisoners, "that the colonial government should have the power of settling the rules for the management and discipline of the prisoners;" "that the home government should pay half the police, and gaol, and administration of justice expenditure, the cost of the penal establishments in the colony, and send out one male and one female immigrant for each prisoner and all the female convicts, so as to keep a parity of sexes."

From the same evidence we learn that at that period (1846) there were about fifteen hundred old convicts "the very worst class of men imaginable" still remaining in the gangs and gaols; and that in the colony there were 13,400 ticket-of-leave holders. The committee reported, too late for the council to take their recommendations into consideration, to the following effect:—

They commence by observing that—

"They are sufficiently cognizant of the state of public feeling among their fellow-colonists to be satisfied that if the proposed renewal of transportation were any longer practically and substantially an open question; if it rested on the