NEW SOUTH WALES. (Hansard, 18 April 1828)

§ Sir J. Mackintosh

said, he held in his hand a petition from the gentry, merchants, tradesmen, &c. of the colony of New South Wales, agreed to at a meeting called by the sheriff, and sanctioned by the government of that country. The prayer of the petition was, for popular representation, and for trial by jury. He had been informed by persons well acquainted with the subject, that the two Australian colonies embraced a population of from fifty-five to sixty-thousand persons, of which number, from thirty-five to forty-thousand were free settlers. The amount of the revenue derived by government from these persons was 60,000l. annually; and the produce of land and labour to 800,000l. He would say nothing on the prayer of the petition, further than that he knew of no one instance in the history of the English colonies, in which a colony, having attained to such importance as these had done, had been denied those invaluable privileges which belonged to them of right, as being British subjects. There were certainly colonies which had only received a semblance, instead of a reality, of the British constitution; but this had been under peculiar circumstances—such as the colonies in Asia, which, perhaps, could not have had the spirit of the British constitution advantageously engrafted upon them. But with respect to those which were properly the colonies of England, he did not know an instance in which the privileges demanded by this petition had been withheld.