[Read before the British Association, at Bath, September, 1864.]
| page | ||
| I.— | Australia and Australasia | 505 |
| II.— | Local Circumstances affecting Ratio of Crime | 506 |
| III.— | Crime in Australia as compared with England | 506 |
| IV.— | Crime and Climate | 507 |
| V.— | Crime in Australia Greater than in England | 507 |
| VI.— | Large Ratio in Victoria the Cause | 508 |
| VII.— | Great Crime Ratio the effect chiefly of Transportation | 509 |
| VIII.— | Improving Condition | 510 |
| 1. Retrospect of New South Wales | 510 | |
| 2. Retrospect of Van Dieman's Land | 511 | |
| 3. Retrospect of Victoria, South Australia, and Queensland | 512 | |
| IX.— | Case of West Australia | 512 |
| Appendix. | ||
| A.— | Opposition to Transportation, and Defensive Legislation of Colonies | 517 |
| B.— | Inequality of the Sexes in the Australian Colonies | 518 |
| C.— | England and Wales, Crime Proportioned to Destitution | 519 |
I.—Australia and Australasia.
The term Australia, used strictly, would limit my subject to the five colonies of our antipodal group that are situated upon the great southern mainland—New South "Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, West Australia. But I shall find occasion, in the course of my remarks, to embrace also the two outside colonies of Tasmania and New Zealand, which belong to the wider circuit distinguished by the name of Australasia. These seven colonies comprise amongst them an area of very nearly three millions of square miles, of which more than two-thirds are still unoccupied. The occupants of the remaining area consist, at the present day, of about 1,300,000 colonists of English blood, in the wider national meaning of the word, besides a small proportion of European foreigners, chiefly Germans; about 40,000 Chinese, who are mostly upon the goldfields in Victoria and New South Wales; and the aboriginal natives. The latter affect, only in a slight way, the criminal statistics of the colonies, as, with one notable exception, that of the New Zealand natives, they are nowhere important in any sense. In the northern island of that colony, however, to which the
