NEW SOUTH WALES AND PARLIAMENT. 295 



cover what profit New South Wales brought the mother country. 

 He held of course in the most extreme sense the theory that 

 from the point of view of economics, colonial expansion was 

 utterly mistaken. 1 After a short resum of the economic argu- 

 ment he thus summarised the position. 



" Thus then stands the real account of profit and loss in re- 

 spect of Colonies in general. Colonies in general yield no ad- 

 vantage to the mother country, because their produce is never 

 obtained without an equivalent sacrifice, for which equal value 

 might have been obtained elsewhere. The particular Colony 

 here in question yields no advantage to the mother country, and 

 for a reason still more simple because it yields no produce." 



The only real acquisition, he concluded, was two hundred 

 and fifty new-discovered plants, " but plants, my Lord, as well as 

 gold, may be bought too dear. ... In return for so many 

 choice and physical plants, transplanted from the Colony, there 

 is one plant, though it be but a metaphorical one, which has 

 been planted in the Colony . . . and that is the plant of 

 military despotism." 



It was this form of Government which he analysed in the 

 Plea for the Constitution in the following year. 2 



He discussed very minutely the illegal assumption of legis- 

 lative powers, powers however, which he admitted had neces- 

 sarily been exercised in the beginning and on many occasions 

 in a praiseworthy manner. No Colony, he said, had ever started 

 so badly equipped with legal rights. To give a Royal Charter 

 would indeed have been impossible, for to a charter there were 

 needed two parties and a forced exile, a convicted criminal could 

 not be one of them. 



" Instructions and counter-instructions, insinuations and 

 counter-insinuations," he wrote, in a characteristic passage, 

 " instructions in form and instructions not in form ; despotism 



1 See the brilliant little pamphlet, " Emancipate your Colonies," written, 

 1793. first published for sale, 1830. 



2 The full title was A plea for the Constitution, shewing the Enormities com- 

 mitted to the oppression of British Subjects Innocent as well as Guilty in Breach 

 of Magna Ckarta, The Petition of Right, The Habeas Corpus Act, and the Bill 

 of Right; so likewise of the Several Transportation Acts ; tn and by the Design, 

 Foundation and Government of Penal Colony of New South Wales : iticludin^ an 

 Inquiry into the Right of the Crown to legislate without Parliament in Trinidad 

 and other British Colonies. 



