ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author brings climactic British anti-slavery debates with developing ideas about the Australian colonies, first reviewing the British context for the triumphant achievement of abolition to show how it provided a conservative solution to social unrest. Systematic colonization provided an answer to the abolition of slavery and transportation by offering to resolve social disorder and provide considerable economic benefits via imperial expansion into 'undeveloped' land, the employment of excess population and development of a market for surplus capital. Molesworth's highly orchestrated report expresses the reformers' opposition to slavery, and their twin desires to reform transportation's moral basis via utilitarian theories of penal reform, alongside its economic replacement in the form of systematic colonization. The dramatic drop was caused by the powerful critique of transportation, drawing on anti-slavery arguments, allied to the inviting new discourses of penal reform and systematic colonization.
