The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-08 00:00:00

rebirertin

LONDON, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1812.

If', was recognised by many intelligent observers,
lor,g before the discoveey of gold in that quarter of
Vie globe, that a necessity was every day becoming
more and more apparent that we shonld no longer
ship. our convicts to the shores of Australia. Since
the enormous increase of emigration to that colony,
consequent upon the anxiety to reach the diggings
before the supply of the precious metal should give
tokens of exhaustion, the fact of that necessity has
become still more generally appreciated. Even the
most obdurate sticklers for the old system have come
at last to acknowledge that it were little short of
madness to dream of continuing to treat those pos-
se ssions of ours in the southern hemisphere as the
moral sink of England, or, in other words, as a
penal settlement. A. change has now become impe-
rative. The Government of Great Britain must forth-
with adopt measures for the more judicious treatment
of such criminals as may in future incur the ven-
geance of the violated laws of the United Kingdom. To
act otherwise than in accordance with this rational and
bezievolent prompting to innovation would be absurd
wad cruel, if only upon the plea of inconsistency. It
'were preposterous to talk of allowing the colonists in
Australia the privilege of arranging the machinery of
their own government, and at the same time to per-
sist in transmitting to their coasts periodically ship-
loads of the dregs of our own population, Some-
thing, it is evident, therefore, is absolutely required
in the way of improvement in this direction. Some
new arrangement is demanded by circumstances from
the Imperial Legislature, with a view to relieve one of
our chief dependencies from the curse of remaining
a penal settlement. Everybody gifted with two grains
of common sense must perceive at a glance that this
Dew arrangement must have reference to the organi-
zation of a different system of punishment than the
one hitherto_enforced in the way of systematic trans-
portation.

Several years have now elapsed since we first called
the attention of the public to an enterprise, by the
developement of which we felt satisfied, on mature
reflection, that incalculable advantages would accrue
t('• the Anglo-Saxon race in both hemispheres. No
other journalist in this country had, at that time,
ventured to assert the merits of the proposed scheme,
or even to allude, in the most cursory manner, to the
mere circumstance of its proposition. It is so far
satisfactory to us to bear in recollection the fact that
The Sun was the first organ of popular opinion to
direct the notice of the community to the plan of a
grand trunk railway across the North American con-
tinent—a railway connecting the Pacific with the At-
lantic, and effecting this, moreover, by traversing our
own fruitful but neglected territories. Already
there had been submitted to the consideration
of the people of the United States the out-
line of a similar undertaking, t's suggested to
his fellow-citizens by the ingenious Mr. Ass. Warr-
:am But the proposition which secured to itself our
peculiar sympathies emanated in the first instance
from an intelligent officer in the British army, in the
course of a somewhat remarkable communication aa_
dressed to the celebrated wit, Judge HALIBURTON. Zt
was the pamphlet written by Major ROBERT CAR-
MICHAEL SMITH, in which was rapidly sketched an
undertaking so vast; and symmetrical, that ALEXANDER
might have entertained the idea of carrying it eut,
adif raioLgorf 'might have conducted it to its actual
realization, w ith PALLADIO as the architect of the
lit', and AucalmsDEs as the principal engineer.
Eis the enterprise unquestionably was on the
first showing,
it was no less obviously at a glance in
every way practicable, its benefits being within the
attimment of the popular energies, supposing those
en ergies were only in the first instance directed
1.,y the vigour and sagacity of the Imperial Govern-
ment. Attracted to the consideration of the subject
by the very grandeur of the proposition, we found
on its more.detailed and deliberate investigation that
the scheme was very far indeed from being in any re-
spect extravagant. It was from arriving at this con-
sion in the serene impartiality of a perfectly un-