To all these remonstrances, so far as they affected the colonist, Lord Stanley had a ready reply. The colony was originally penal, and could claim neither compensation nor relief. He considered that in emigrating the colonists surrendered at discretion; that they were not entitled to object to the trebling of their police burdens and to the importation of all instead of a small part of the convicts of the empire, as was the case up to 1840. His rejoinder was felt with that bitterness which none can realise who have not known the tyranny of irresistible despotism. Happily for mankind there is no power above the steady and determined operations of truth and right. The cruel desertion of the people in the hour of their distress--the scornful defiance of their complaints, has involved the cabinet of England in difficulties for which nothing but great sacrifices will fully obviate. No people in this hemisphere will entirely trust a British minister until the history of Van Diemen's Land is forgotten. The anticipated relief not having arrived, the governor again assembled the council on the 21st of October. He now proposed several expedients to meet the exigencies of the moment. He had, unauthorised by the council, borrowed money of a bank. He proposed to stop the forage allowance of the clergy, and to retain 12-1/2 per cent. of the salaries of the officials. Both these measures were withstood--the last effectively. The chief justice denied the power of the council to interfere with his income. When a new set of estimates was offered they were found to be unintelligible, and an adjournment, to enable the colonial secretary to afford the necessary information, was proposed by Mr. Dry. This reasonable request was lost by the governor's casting vote, and several motions with a similar object were defeated in the same manner. Mr. O'Connor, the non-official member who supported the executive, was absent, and thus the votes of the official and country party were equal, and the balance was in the governor's hands.[243] At the next sitting of the council Wilmot proposed to pass the estimates. Ineffectual efforts to postpone their consideration exhausted all means of evasion, and Mr. Dry moved that the Appropriation Act should be read that day six months. He expatiated on the injustice of the system which condemned the colony to the cost of an imperial scheme, and insisted on the solemn obligation of the council to resist an accumulation of debt which must involve the colony in ruin. Mr. Gregson followed, and referred to the unavailing representations of Sir G. Arthur, Sir John Franklin, and Sir E. Wilmot himself, in reference to police expenses, and dwelling on the evils of the convict system. An adjournment of the debate being moved the governor opposed it with his deliberative and casting vote, and added that he resisted the motion because it was only intended to embarrass. The Appropriation Act would then have gone to the