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 results of the system of abuse and mismanagement I have described, in regard to the moral and political welfare of the rapidly advancing and flourishing colony of New South Wales, have latterly become so prominent and so unquestionable, that, under the idea of there being no other remedy to be had recourse to, there is now a very considerable and daily increasing number of the most respectable inhabitants of that colony, who maintain that the transportation of convicts to New South Wales ought to be forthwith and entirely discontinued; insomuch, that during the last two years the most respectable portion of the colonial press has been strenuously advocating the immediate and entire discontinuance of the importation of convicts, as a measure of indispensable necessity for the future welfare of the colony.

Indeed, if the system hitherto pursued in that colony, in regard to the management of the convicts, is to be continued, and if all the evils I have enumerated as having already resulted from that monstrous system, are not only to be entailed on the colony, but to be augmented and perpetuated ad infinitum by large annual importations of criminals from Great Britain and Ireland, the entire and immediate discontinuance of transportation, as a species of punishment, is