Navvies and Convicts

The Empire Thursday 8 May 1851 p. 2.

With reference to the Convict Question, we are heartily glad to find our correspondent, in the name of the genuine squatters of the colony, speaking in terms of forcible denunciation of the accursed system.

The concurrent' testimony of the northern and southern squatters to the utter worthlessness of convict labour, we think, cannot, fail to remove the lingering doubts of those among us, who, too timid or too indolent to assist with honest independence thc rights of a free community, would crouch before the petty Jupiter of the Imperial Bureau, and take contentedly the offal which he vouchsafes to throw to them.

"We must have labour," say those doubters, "and if the English Government will not send us free labourers, we had better take convicts"; if the settlers wont hire them, we can employ them on our railway, and our other public works."

We, of this journal, are old-fashioned and English enough to prefer railway navvies to chain gangs ; and if we cannot get the railway navvies, we will try to do without the railway.