in addressing our countrymen, we might remind you that the reputation of this entire hemisphere is compromised by the condition of Van Diemen's Land. The nice geographical distinctions which colonists make are lost in the distance. As your vessels enter foreign ports, the line which divides your population from ours fails to distinguish them. We have heard with regret, and not without humiliation, that the British name, every where respectable until now, has ceased to insure to many, who have never forfeited its sanction, the common confidence of foreign nations. That a petty state, but of yesterday, has initiated laws intended to stigmatise all the inhabitants of the southern world, and attributing to the whole the character of convictism. A more serious consideration is the positive injury inflicted upon the islanders of the Southern Ocean by scattering among them desperate men who have been perfected in all the arts of wickedness, and who are placed within reach of an interesting and rising people, whom they too often shock by their vices and oppress by their crimes. We submit, sir, to your humanity as a British fellow subject, and to your discretion as a christian magistrate, the case of this country. In the mutation of human affairs, the arm of oppression, which has smitten us with desolation, may strike at your social well-being. Communities allied by blood, language, and commerce, cannot long suffer alone. We conjure you, therefore, by the unity of colonial interests--as well as by the obligations which bind all men to intercede with the strong and unjust on behalf of the feeble and oppressed--to exert your influence to the intent that transportation to Van Diemen's Land may for ever cease."