labour, and, particularly, the use of the capital which would be introduced with a penal settlement. But, while they temporarily forgot what Governor Fitzgerald had done, Mr. Samson's letter from England and the last proposal from York revived the spirit of agitation. From time to time batches of Parkhurst lads had been introduced, who, to all intents, were juvenile convicts. During the years 1843 to 1848 some had been imported; in 1849 the Ameer and Mary landed 103 more. Some of the earlier boys were not amenable to restraint, and a few had become criminals. More and more objection was therefore taken to them, and it was thought that it would be as well to have convicts. In January, 1849, it was rumoured that old Western Australians, then residing in South Australia, were petitioning the Imperial Government to establish a penal settlement in Western Australia, obviously to enable them to sell their local property to advantage. According to the view of a few people the time had come when they must renew the agitation for a penal settlement.
Then a despatch was received from Earl Grey, copies of which were sent to various British Colonies. The Secretary for the Colonies was a warm advocate of transportation; he had formulated schemes of his own which he wanted to test. He desired an answer. Under date of 5th August, 1848, he wrote in laudatory terms of convict labour, and praised the good conduct of exiles at Gibraltar, Bermuda, and Port Phillip. But he did not consider it advisable that convicts should be set entirely at large on reaching the colony to which they might be sent after a certain period of good conduct. Tickets of leave were more satisfactory, for thereby the exiles could be restricted to certain districts, and the payment of moderate sums out of their wages in return for the cost of their conveyance could be enforced. "Sums thus recovered," wrote Earl Grey, "should be applied not to relieve this country (England) from the charge incurred on their account, but for the benefit of the colonies which may receive them, either in sending out free emigrants to meet the great demand for labour which exists in most of these colonies, or in any other manner which may be more suitable to the peculiar circumstances of others of them."
Such being the system under which he proposed to proceed, he thought the inhabitants of Western Australia should be willing to receive men with tickets of leave; they would obtain a supply of labour, and probable funds out of the men's wages, while there was reason to hope that the general character of the community would not be injured. Moreover, "considering the urgent representations which are constantly received at this office of the want of an adequate supply of labour, it seems possible that if this system of convict discipline were well understood, the colonists might be desirous of receiving men upon the foregoing terms in their last stage of punishment, and after they had earned a favourable character from the authorities under whose control they were placed." Earl Grey desired to know whether such a class of people was wished for in Western Australia, and upon receiving a favourable answer promised to take the necessary steps to make the colony a penal settlement.
Just at this time, owing to there being no extensive market for the transportation of convicts, English prisons were becoming uncomfortably congested, and a locality was anxiously looked for where their inhabitants might be disgorged. The rest of Australia, and also South Africa, refused convicts on any terms. A few months later Mr. Jackson, agent for Van Dieman's Land in London, petitioned Earl Grey, on behalf of his Government, for the cessation of transportation to that colony.
On 27th January, 1849, Messrs. L. Samson, W. Burges, R.H. Habgood, G.M. Whitfield, W.W. Hoops, R. Stewart, J.G.C. Carr, H. Devenish, J. Stokes, V. H. Sholl, A. O'Grady Lefroy, and P. Marmion despatched the following letter to Mr. G.F. Stone, the Sheriff of the colony:
"We, the undersigned requisitionists, beg you will call at your earliest convenience, a meeting of the whole colony for the purpose of taking into consideration the general prospects of the colony, its resources and want of labour to develop them; and to request Her Majesty's Government to adopt the only means which we can conceive calculated to save the Province from abandonment, viz., by making it at once a penal settlement with the requisite Government expenditure."
The meeting was held on 20th February, when several resolutions embodying its views were carried. These deplored the "steady and constant emigration of labour from the colony"; considered that fresh capital and abundant labour should be obtained to take the place of that which had been lost; and viewed with "regret and alarm" the proposal that the English Government should introduce persons drafted from the Penitential Asylums in England, and now on tickets of leave, as being a course quite unsuited to the wants of the settlers, and tending to make matters worse instead of better," inasmuch as it would inflict on the colony all the evils of a convict settlement without the necessary protection and expenditure. Finally, they agreed that—
"Application be made at once to Her Majesty's Government to erect the colony into a regular Penal Settlement, the whole cost of the transmission and supervision of all such convicts as may be transported hither to be borne by the Home Government."
These convicts should be employed in developing profitable resources which otherwise were totally useless to either the mother country or the colony; among them being the promising mines of lead and coal recently discovered in the N.W. and S., and the exhaustless supply of fine timber which would serve to freight home the ships by which the convicts were conveyed.
Governor Fitzgerald pledged himself to place the matter in a true light before Earl Grey, and expressed the conviction that strong measures were required to produce a reaction or even to prevent those who had the necessary money from leaving the colony. For some weeks an ominous silence was preserved; the opponents of convictism held back; the advocates waited. The memorial in course of preparation in York in 1848 was allowed to lapse. Desultory debates for and against convicts were held. Perhaps there were as many against as for; the opponents believed afterwards that they had been fatally silent. All colonists were uncommonly startled at what followed.
An Order-in-Council was issued by Her Majesty on 1st May, 1849, nominating Western Australia one of the places to which convicts could be sent from the United Kingdom. The news reached Western Australia in November, and was published in the Government Gazette on the 6th of that month. The action was so sudden and unexpected by the majority of people that they were thrown into consternation. It is an open question what was the exact state of parties, and in the light of the express original stipulation—that no convicts be sent—the opponents of the innovation were righteously indignant. They accused the English Government of wickedly breaking an oft-given pledge; of misleading original and all subsequent settlers; of initiating a dangerous principle without first obtaining the distinct opinion of the people.
Thus, although the constitution provided to the contrary, Western Australia was to be a penal settlement. The Inquirer was pleased; the old Gazette wrote in alarm that Western Australians had subjected themselves and their children to the "contamination and infamy" inseparable from a penal settlement. Earl Grey had "taken advantage of His Excellency's fatal application for 100 married Pentonville men to force upon the colony the character of
