TRANSPORTATION TO WESTERN AUSTRALIA.
Acconnrxo to the latest official announcement, transportation is not to be quite discontinued. From what the Duke of Newcastle stated in Parliament, we were led to suppose, that after the com- pletion of certain arrangements, apparently for the present year, made by the late Government in respect of transportation to Western Australia, it would totally cease. But the Lord Chan- cellor speaks as if this punishment were to be retained for the most heinous offenders, of whom about eight hundred annually are to be shipped to Swan River.
Eight hundred may seem a very moderate allowance as compared to the numbers formerly sent to New South Wales or Van Diemen's Land ; but it is large as compared with the actual population of Western Australia, and consequences as calamitous as those in New South Wales, although represented by smaller numerical figures, may be set down beforehand as the certain results. Already re- ports have reached this country that employment could not be found for the five or six hundred convicts that had arrived. But for the penal discipline of transportation employment is essentially necessary. The first object of transportation therefore cannot be secured in Western Australia. In some respects the prospects of the settlers have improved, and intelligent proprietors have mend- ed the errors of their predecessors ; still, available capital is ab- sent, and will not soon be forthcoming. The same reason which prevents the employment of convicts will also prevent the colonists from supplying a guard : they cannot furnish that 90,0001. a year for gaol-expenses which the colonists of New South Wales managed
to afford, although with so ill a will. Without a guard, without employment, without a numerous population' the people of Swan River will be unable to control the criminal colonists who are to be intruded amongst them.
The only chance that the criminal population will not exceed the settlers in number, at no very distant date, is to be found in the probability, either that they may stray away into the woods, and become bushrangers and squatters, or, what is more likely, that they will make their way, by land or water, to the gold-fields : so that if Western Australia be not choked with a convict popu- lation, it will become the conduit for conveying that poriktion to the colonists who have been promised a permanent relief.
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