In after years their numbers were but little increased. Considerable doubt existed about their progress being sure, and none whatever about its being slow. Never well-to-do, they felt very severely the depression general throughout Australia in 1848. People looked to their money-chests only to see if they had sufficient left to take them away. Casting about for relief, the York Agricultural Society suggested that convicts should be applied for, and the proposal found favour with the people. Backsliding seems as easy with communities as with individuals. The colonists who had met more than their share of difficulties and obstruction, while proceeding in the straight-forward path of settlement, found everything prepared for them when they turned aside. It so happened that, just before this time, the effects produced by the vast influx of convicts into Tasmania had shocked the British public, and provoked a spirit of resentment and resistance in the Australian colonies such as had never existed before. The whole of the eastern settlements stood arrayed against the mother country, and the conclusion was forced upon the Imperial Government that the system must be terminated. Earl Grey, who was then in office, and who had initiated important improvements in the management of convicts, endeavoured to find for the flood of British criminals a new outlet where these plans could be tested. He addressed a circular on the subject to the colonies of New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia, New Zealand, the Cape, the Mauritius, and Ceylon, explaining the improvements it was proposed to make in the management of the convicts, promising to send a free emigrant for every convict shipped, and asking whether, under these conditions, the colonies would consent to receive criminals. The answer was "No" in each instance, with the single exception of Western Australia. Her reply was favourable, and a bargain was soon struck. Western Australia entered into the contract upon the understanding that the annual imperial expenditure should be sufficiently large to be of importance to the colony, and in the hope that cheap labour would attract capital to it. The system was continued until 1868, when, in deference to the protests of the sister states, and because also expectation had been greatly disappointed as to the results, convict importation was finally closed and determined. The protest was carried so far that it was proposed by one Government to exclude from the ports of the free colonies ships that had come from the convict settlement; and this decision would have shut out the mail steamers. And Western Australia found that, while it obtained convict labour, it frightened away free men, while immigrants avoided the place as though it were a plague-spot. Now it may be said the past is forgotten, the taint is dying away, and Western Australia is awakening into life.