The Sun.
London, England, 1849-09-15 00:00:00

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

The intelligence received from the Cape of Good
Hope to the 10th of July is highly important. The
Government decree appointing the colony to be a
penal settlement had arrived out, and was communi-
cated to the public in the official Gazette of the 21st
of June. It was printed afterwards in some of the
local papers, surrounded by a deep black border ;
while the proprietors of other journals refused to print
it in their regular newspapers, but gave it in a supple-
ment, encircled with the same mournful insignia. On
the 4th another most impressive display of public
feeling took place in Cape Town relative to the intro-
duction of convicts from the mother country. " This
meeting (says the Cape Town Mail) was held in the
open air on the Grand Parade ; where, notwithstand-
ing a most unfavourable state of weather (the rain
pouring down in torrents during a greater part of the
time), an immense multitude of anxious men, of all
ranks and classes, assembled and stood for six hours,
amidst the pitiless pelting of the storm, listening and
responding with eager shouts, while thirty successive
speakers, comprising some of the most able, influen-
tial, and wealthy members of the community,
drenched to the skin, moved, seconded, and enforced
a series of powerfully-worded resolutions ; the whole
of which were unanimously carried with thunders of
approbation, and ordered to be embodied in one
more petition' to the Queen and Parliament of Britain.
The Hon. J. B. Eden was called to the chair."
The following were the resolutions passed at the
meeting :--
" 1. That the introduction of criminals under se..tence
of transportation, exile, or banishment from the United
Kingdom, or any other quarter, is injurious and degrad-
ing to this colony, and ought to be resisted.
"2. That the British Government has no right to
degrade into a penal settlement the Cape of Good Hope,
which became a portion of the British Empire by
capitulation and cession of a friendly power, and not
by planting or conquest—with its rights and privileges
as a free and not a penal settlement solemnly guaranteed;
and that all attempts so to injure and degrade it are un-
just and tyrannical, and may be constitutionally resisted
by the inhabitants as British subjects.
" 3. That the insertion of the Cape of Good Hope in
the Orders in Council of September 4, 1848, as a place to
which convicts may be conveyed, simply by an order
from one of the principal Secretaries of State, in opposi-
tion to the petitions, remonstrances, and protests of the
inhabitants, presented to her Majesty and both Houses
of Parliament, is subversive of the right and privileges of
this community.
"4. That the conduct of Earl Grey, in first directing
the Governor to ascertain the opinions and wishes of the
people on this vital question, and then acting in deft ince
of their unanimous decision, is an exaggeration of insult
added to injury towards an unoffending community,
which proves him to be unworthy to retain any place in
the government of a free people.
"5. That the conduct of the Governor, Sir Harry
Smith, in refusing to take upon him'elf the responsibi-
lity of suspending this injurious and degrading measure,
when he found the universal dissatisfaction which the
proposal excited at the Cape, supported by arguments of
a weighty nature,' as all Governors of distant possessions
are expected to act in emergencies, and as Sir efharles
Fitzroy and Sir William Dension did last year in the
two penal settlements of New South Wales and Van
Diemen's Land, for which they immediately received the
entire approbation of her Majesty's Government; and laj
determination to carry out the measure in violation of
a pledge to the contrary given to the people in the name
of her Majesty's Government, and in contempt of an op-
position en the part of an injured and insulted peot le,
such as never was before equalled in any part of the
British empire, being absolutely universal, prove that
the Government of this colony, as at present adminis-
tered, is wholly at variance with the just and inalienable
rights of British subjects, and perilous to the honour,
safety, and happiness of the country.
6. That it is the right and duty of the iohanants of
this colony, individually and collectively, in.their private
and public capacities, to oppose the execution of this
injurious, degrading :despotic, and dangerous measure,
by all constitutional means, and that one of the most
effectual means will be to sign and rigidly adhere to the
following pledge:—
" ' We, the undersigned colonists and inhabitants of
the Cape of Good Hope hereby solemnly declare and
pledge our faith to each other, that we will not employ,
or knowingly admit into our establishments or houses,
work with or for, or associate with, any convicted felon
or felons sent to this colony under sentence of trans-
portation, and that we will discountenance and drop con-
nexion with any person who may assist in landing, sup-
porting, or employing such convicted felons.'
" 7. That a petition be presented to the Queen, pray-
ing that the Orders in Council of the 4th of September,
1848, in which this colony is named as a place to which
convicts may be transported, be revoked, and that her
Majesty may refuse her consent to any proposal that
may bo made by her Ministers, to insert the Cape at any
future time among the places to which convicts or per-
sons under sentence of exile or banishment may be
conveyed. And that her Majesty may be pleased
to order the removal of such convicts as may have been
conveyed to the Cape under the authority of the said
Orders in Council.
8. That as the colonial department of her Majesty's
Government has justly forfeited the confidence of the
people, application shall be made with the least pos-
sible delay, to the Qaeen and both Houses of Parlia-
ment, praying that the Cape of Good Hope may be ex-
pressly excepted, by an Act passed for that purpose,
from among those places to which offenders may be
conveyed by virtue of Orders in Council.
" O. That the most cordial thanks of this mooting and
of the whole colony are justly due to C. B. Adderley,
Esq., M.P., for his generous and able defence of our
rights and privileges as a free people, and that he be
respectfully requested to present our petition to the
House of Commons, and to support its prayer with the
weight of his character and talents.
" 10. That it shall be left to the Committee of the
Anti-Convict Association to select a Peer to whom the
petition to the House of Lords may be confided, and it
is recommended that, should it be found convenient, his
Grace the Archbishop of Dublin, the wise and prophetic
enemy of transportation, may be requested to demand
an audience of the Qaeen, and personally to present our
petition to her Majesty."
A deputation of the Anti-Convict Association waited
on his Excellency on the 18th of Juno, which was cour-
teously received by his Excellency.
The Hon. Mr. Ebden said—" May it please your Ex-
cellency, we have the honour to wait on your Excellency
with an address from the Anti-Convict Association.
The Act of Lord Grey, in having made this colony a
penal settlement, without the consent and in opposition
to the wishes of the people, and the many aggravating
and collusive circumstances attending it, as recently
brought to our notice, have, I am grieved to say, ut-
terly destroyed the confidence of the public in her
Majesty's Government, and brought the local Govern-
ment into contempt. The people of this colony have no
longer any faith in the promises and pledges of the Go-
vernment. To your Excellency, as the representative of
our Sovereign, we appeal in the hour of peril and danger
to protect us from the moral pollution we are threatened
with."

His Excellency expressed the pleasure ho always ex-
periencod on receiving the representations of the people.
lle bad already shown the interest he felt in the welfare
of the colony. On the opening of his administration, he
had called on the people of this colony for their confi
deuce and support, and he knew no reason why they
should be withdrawn from him on this occasion. This,
said his Excellency, is the anniversary of the battle or
Waterloo ; for four-and-forty years have I served her
Majesty—l say it with pride—and I would rather that
God Almighty would strike me dead than disobey the
orders of her Majesty's Government, and thereby con
mit an act of open reb-llion.
Mr. Ebden then read the address.
" May it please your Excellency,—
"The members of the association for preventing this
colony from being used as a penal settlement again wait
upon your Excellency, to entreat you, by all that is held
sacred among men, to save the people committed to your
charge from the injury and degradation with which they
are threatened.

" Your Excellency is now aware that the opposition to
this fatal measure is universal. Your Excellency, as
Governor, has pronounced it an injury and degradation,
and that your Excellency must feel is what no British
Sovereign can inflict on any people without a violation
of the original compact, and of the coronation oath—it
has been pronounced injurious, and tending to alienate
the affections of the people from her Majesty's Govern-
ment, by a resolution of the Legislative Council—all the
colony, from Table Bay to the remotest frontier, have s--
lemnly and indignantly denounced it, and at the same
time expressed their determined resolution to oppose
and resist it to the uttermost of their power. And we
all feel that any attempt to carry out this injurious and
degrading measure by force will involve this unoffending
community in the direst calamities.
" Your Excellency is therefore respectfully reminded
that the moral well-being, prosperity, and happiness of
the people whom you govern should be the paramount
consideration with you, their Governor, and that it is
therefore your duty, as representing the Queen, to over-
look all minor considerations, and to protect, at all ha-
zards, that moral well-being, prosperity and happiness
against injury and degradation, by suspending the pub-
lication and operation of any Order in:Council, or of any
other order, authorising you to receive convicted felons
into this colony."
His Excellency then read the following
" Government House, Cape Town, June 18, 1849.
"Gentlemen,_my duty dictates the line of conduct I
am bound to pursue, which is recorded in my minute of
the 15th inst., which I laid
on that date on the table of
the Legislative Council- and
r.d from which as I there state,
nothing can or shall induceme
of the
" My dispatch to Earl Grey
addresses,
ult., accompa-
nied by the numerous petitions, torr. estshees,
community,
signed by so many thousands
will prevent this colony from becoming a penal settle-
ment, or I am deeply mistaken.
" This address shall accompany my first dispatch to
Earl Grey on the subject.
" While I thus tell you that my duty requires me to
receive in this colony the persons in question, I do not
mean to turn them loose upon the colony—a course
which would be inevitably productive of ill consequences,
They cannot be released from control or deprived of
protection, unless employment and protection shall be
found for them. In what place of separation or security
they will bo received, pending ultimate arrangements,
I shall determine hereafter, and announce for the in-
formation of such of the colonists as may be willing to
give the parties in question the means of honest liveli-
hood. "11. G. SMITH."
Mr. Ehden—Your Excellency having alluded to this 1
day being the anniversary of the glorious battle of 1
Waterloo, you will pardon me adverting to an anecdote I
recorded of the Duke of Wellington on that memorable