The Colonies continue to send their backhanded compliments to Earl
Grey ; and Earl-Grey is carrying out his crotchets as he can.
In Canada, his head man, Lord Elgin, goes skulking about for fear of being mobbed by the people over whom he is titularly Governor.
In Jamaica, Sir Charles Grey has managed the retrenchment quarrel so maladroitly as to bring about anarchy in the Customs department : beaten by the majority of the new Assemby,-which, against his resistance, passed a bill to continue the Custoins Act for only three months, he has put an end to the session, and the Assembly has separated without continuing the Customs Act at all; so that for two months before a new bill can be passed, foreign goods will be admissible free of all duty. This scandalous breach of government is no novelty in the West Indies; but it is the more rather than the less annoying and contemptible in the eyes of local politicians. At the Cape of Good Hope, the colonists keep up their deter- mined iegoliition not to employ or harbour the imported convicts ; and as the Governor conceives that he has more power over them than he first supposed. the colonists are urging him at once to send the convicts back to Bermuda or England.
Meanwhile if a paragraph current in the papers last week and uncontradicted this week may be trusted, Lord Grey, evading the contest:With the larger colonies, proposes to send convints untkr an escort of penSioners to Moreton Bay and Norfolk Island. Moreton Bay is in New South Wales, which colony repudiates the convicts. Lord Grey reversed the plan of his predecessor for erecting Moreton Bay into a separate colony, and took some credit for the step : he now makes it a penal colony ! And . Arai:folk Island ! —we all know what that was before the zealous and intelligent Captain Maconochie had the command, and what it has become since he left it. Lord Grey is about to repeople that " hell "; and a large number of Chelsea pensioners are to spend their last days in watching over a community that cannot be controlled, in witnessing crimes that they cannot prevent. Unable to carry out his purpose in,Acoerica, or Africa, or the set- tled parts, of Australia, 'Lord Grey carries his crotchet to desolate cornerai-apparently as helpless as he is self-willed.
