20 TRANSPORTATION TO AMERICA. difficult. The convicts, scattered over the immense territory _ of the plantations, were so rapidly absorbed in the general population that all traces of their identity were soon lost in the crowd ; a result largely owing to the means of refor- mation afforded them by free grants of land and assistance in the work of cultivation. TOnfto New Transportation to New South Wales ceased in 1841, and South Wales, the total number of convicts sent out to the colony up to that date is calculated at 83,000.* Of this portion of its population it may be said that the process of absorption which took place in the American colonies has been witnessed here — ^largely accelerated by the great gold discoveries which began ten years after the system was discontinued. Those discoveries may be said to have dispersed the scattered remnants of the old convict days, as effectually, if not as rapidly, as bush fires have consumed the decayed vegeta- tion of a forest. oesBfttdon of Transportation to Van Diemen^s Land and Norfolk Island ceased in 1853, and to Western Australia in 1867. For nearly eighty years, in face of all the accumulated evidence against it, this system was carried out as resolutely under one form of government as another — ^with the same faith itBgup- in its equity under Lord John Brussell in 1840 as under £nd ite Lord Sydney over half a century before ; and but for the opponen determined resistance of the colonies to its continuance, it would probably have been in existence at the present day. So little do merely moral considerations avail, when weighed in the balance against political convenience. prisoners had been transported to the United States, appeared in the same periodical for December 11, 1886 (vol. ii, p. 476)i to which several replies were sent ; see voL iii, pp. 58, 114, 193 ; vol. iv, pp. 134, 394; voL v, p. 196. • Post, p. 463. Digitized by Google
