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 that as regards Van Diemen's Land he would not, had he continued in power, have yielded to either gold or agitation; nay, more,—that he would have created the Moreton Bay district into a separate colony for the express purpose of enabling the squatters—whom his land policy has fixed in possession of that fine country to the exclusion of yeomanry—to accept the convicts whom the colonists on the whole line of coast eastward have agreed in rejecting.

Such are the leading facts of the Anti-Transportation Question, one of several which formed the subjects of bitter contest between the colonists and Earl Grey during the administration of Governor Fitzroy. Of the seeds of distrust, almost of sedition, then sown, we fear we have not yet seen the full fruit.

CHAPTER XVII.

CORRESPONDENCE WITH PARLIAMENTARY AGENT.

E are enabled to obtain a good idea of the state of public opinion on all the important points which formed the subject of discussion between the Colonial Office and the colonists during- Sir Charles Fitzroy's administration, by turning to the correspondence which took place between a committee of the Legislative Council, named as the Corresponding Committee, over which the Speaker of the Council presided, and Mr. Francis Scott, M.P.

So early as 1844 the Legislative Council, in the height of their contest with the Governor and Colonial Secretary of State on "the grievances connected with crown lands," turned their attention to the propriety of securing the services, as paid agent, of some member of the British Parliament, who would fill for New South Wales the post occupied by Edmund Burke, as representative of the State of New York, before the breaking out of the War of Independence.

With this view the late Mr. Benjamin Boyd, who was urging with indefatigable energy and zeal the cause of his brother squatters in England, selected the Hon. Francis Scott, M.P., brother of Lord Polwarth, a barrister, a director of the South-Western Railway, a Conservative of very decided Protestant and Protectionist views, with a good political connection among his party, and industrious business habits. But when the scheme was laid before Lord Stanley,