Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/189

 In another part of their report the committee observe, "The secret to disarm transportation of its evil influences is to increase the free population," that it may always maintain a decided ascendancy, and to keep up the equality of the sexes, that the colony may never more be subjected to the horrors of a populus vivorum"

It seems that at that period the males of the colony were 114,000 to 74,000 females.

The committee conclude with an eloquent peroration, no doubt the work of their accomplished chairman, on the beneficial results to be anticipated from their recommendations.

This report having been issued too late to be discussed by the Legislative Council, was forwarded by the government to the Colonial Office, and fell into the hands of Mr. Gladstone's successor, Earl Grey.

EARL GREY. Sir Charles Fitzroy, warned by the error of Governor Gipps, in his first address to the Legislative Council, assured them that he should defer any legislative action on his own part until he made such a stay and such investigations as were "necessary to acquire personal experience upon several momentous questions upon which it would be presumptuous to offer any opinion at so early a period of our intercourse;" and he added:—"I take this opportunity of publicly declaring, in perfect sincerity, that I have assumed the responsible trust with which our Sovereign has honoured me, unfettered by any preconceived opinions on every subject affecting the interests of any class o [sic] her Majesty's subjects in this territory."

Among the important subjects affected by this timely and sagacious declaration stood foremost the renewal of transportation; the upset price of crown lands; the terms on which those lands were to be temporarily occupied by pastoral proprietors; the control and appropriation of the colonial revenues; and the establishment of steam communication.

On all these and many other colonial subjects, as we learn from a work recently published by the noble earl, Lord Grey had fully made up his mind, with that instinctive intuition peculiar to those who are "swaddled, and rocked, and dandled into legislators."

And here we must pause in tracing the progress of the transportation question to describe the minister who has had so large a share in alienating the affections of the Australian colonists from the mother