ABSTRACT
The resignation of Lord Grey was deemed by the AntiTransportation League so much a matter of rejoicing as to demand an Address to the Queen: Sir John Pakington, despite the past associations of his party with the hated system, seemed a much less formidable obstacle. To the fulminations of the League were added Addresses from the Legislative Councils of New South Wales, Victoria, and Van Diemen's Land against the continuance of transportation 'in any form whatever to any part of Her Majesty's Australasian Dominions' : to the Addresses a memorial from a committee of Australian colonists in London boldly declaring that 'if transportation to any of the Australian Colonies be persevered in, the day is not far distant when their angry and forcible separation from the Mother Country will inevitably take place'.2 The Surveyor-General of Prisons, Colonel Jebb, was asked for his opinion: it was surprisingly favourable to reform. The change of circumstances in the colonies, and the increased familiarity of the people with emigration, had in his opinion deprived transportation of most of its terrors for the criminal; and the terrors of the opposite system to the Mother Country had been exaggerated. It was said to be expensive: but the application of convict labour to works of national importance like the new harbour at Portland was in the long run an economy. It was said to be dangerous: but not more than one-tenth of those imprisoned were sentenced to transporta-
tion, and far greater danger was to be apprehended from the other nine-tenths who received no reformatory training. I This report probably clinched the matter: foritwas no longer so easy to contend that a paramount Imperial interest required that the wishes of the colonies should be disregarded. In the Queen's Speech of II November 1852 Parliament was recommended to devise means whereby transportation to Van Diemen's Land might 'at no distant date be altogether discontinued': in a dispatch of 14 December 1852 Sir John Pakington conveyed the decision to Sir William Denison. The change would entail the erection of new prisons and would in other ways take time: but in principle the Government were agreed that they ought no longer to convey offenders to the neighbourhood of the Australian goldfields, and that they ought 'to comply with a wish so generally a'nd so forcibly expressed by the colonists of Australia'.2 When the Derby Ministry fell, the Ministry of Aberdeen at once adopted its decision. On 31 December 1852 the last Van Diemen's Land convict-ship set sail: a year later the Order in Council permitting transportation thither was revoked, and Van Diemen's Land was a free colony at last.
