Excerpt: ... people for whom the Home Government could not provide in England, it had been accustomed to send to New South Wales, to Western Australia, and to Van Diemen's Land. A large part of the population of these countries consisted partly of transported convicts and partly of paupers whom public or private money had enabled to emigrate. As Sir William Molesworth bluntly described it, "Colonial Office colonization consists in the transportation of convicts and the shovelling out of paupers."259 The time was at length reached when the independent emigrants and the descendants of earlier settlers who were themselves of good character protested against this use of their country without their own consent.260 205 In 1839 Russell, as Colonial Secretary, stopped transportation to New South Wales. But convicts were still sent to Tasmania and Norfolk Island. In four years no less than sixteen thousand of these unwelcome immigrants had been forced upon the inhabitants of Tasmania, and in 1840 they presented a petition praying that the system might be stopped. Peel's Government suspended transportation to Tasmania for two years, but actually contemplated reviving it in the case of New South Wales. Transportation was apparently regarded as a sort of administration of human alcohol. So long as the proportion of convicts to independent settlers did not exceed a certain figure no harm would be done. But the inhabitants of New South Wales protested loudly, and when the Whigs came into office in 1847, with Lord Grey as Secretary for the Colonies, they abolished all transportation except to Bermuda and Gibraltar. A last attempt to impose upon colonists was made in 1849. A shipload of convicts was then taken to the Cape. There was a violent outburst of feeling, and the noxious cargo was finally discharged in Tasmania. After a few more years of bickering between the embarrassed Imperial Government and the determined colonists, the system was completely abandoned in 1853.261...