Widnes Examiner. — 1904-06-25 (Widnes, Cheshire, England)

BEGAN TO BUILD THAT COLONY WITH BAD MATERIALS.  For many centuries our forefathers had a perfect mania for discovering and appropriating other countries in the ends of the earth, and neglecting their own fields and gardens at home. They sent Captain James Cook on a voyage round the world to pick up any stray continents, or derelict islands he could find, and claim them as our own private property. In 1770. he explored the coasts and harbours of New South Wales, and he promptly hoisted the British flag as a sign of ownership. It is true there were thousands of natives who owned it, and occupied it long before Captain Cook discovered it, but they were only niggers to be shot down and exterminated whenever they became troublesome. _  We had no particular need of this new country, and it was a white elephant on our hands, for we could not persuade Englishmen to go and live there. At last some genius conceived the idea of making it a penal settlement, and a dumping ground for our thieves and murderers that we did not send to the gallows. In the year 1788, we sent out from England his Majesty's ship " Sirius, " and nine other vessels to Botany Bay, with a cargo of 750 convicts. That place was found unsuitable, so the commander of the expedition dropped anchor in the harbour of Sydney, and dumped down his "undesirables " there. These poor wretches had been sentenced to penal servitude for life, or for a long term of years, and we were manufacturing criminals so fast in England that we were at our wits' end to find room for them, so we hit upon the brilliant idea of sending them to develop a new country In Australia. These thieves, and murderers, were the real founders of the colony. They felled the trees, and cleared the forests, and ploughed the fields, and made the roads, and built the houses, and turned the wilderness into a fruitful field while British troops kept them at work at the point of the bayonet, and shot them down if they tried to run away. If Imperialism means empire-building by violence, and robbery, and murder, lam not having any. The empire that is built by wars of aggression, and cemented with blood cannot last long. And I am dead against the building of any colony with such cheap and nasty , materials as convicts, and murderers, and thieves. If you corrupt the fountain of a nation's life you will utterly ruin the stream. If you build a State on rotten foundations and with "undesirable" materials, you must expect that fabric to totter to its fall. And yet we permit every new colony to be flooded with wastrels, and scoundrels, who are no credit to anybody, and we pay these criminals to fight our battles, and loot and plunder our enemies, and commit nameless atrocities for us. But there came a time in the history of New South Wales when men of character were wanted, and it was no easy matter to tempt them to settle there. Where is the honest, intelligent farmer who would take his wife and daughters to a colony of criminals, and reprobates and ask them to live among the scrum and froth of our volatile race? The colony had an evil reputation, and character counts for something among nations, as well as individuals. So the settlers we wanted had to be bribed, and tempted by all kinds of grants,and inducements or they would never come at all. The leavening of that mass of corruption cost us a pretty penny from first to last. We had to give them free grants of land for theirgarras and sheep ranches.We had to offer them free passages from Europe to the colony, and guarantee them an abundance of rcheap labour. The convicts were" apprenticed "to the farmer. I like that word. It sounds so much nicer than the word slaves. Each farmer took one or more of these criminals, and gave him his food and clothing and in return he took out of the wretch'all the labour he eould get. lI.—WE PERMITTED•THE CLASSES TO OPPRESS