We print elsewhere a letter from an Australian in answer
to the observations which we made on the New South Wales Treason- Felony Act as long ago as 23rd May. The writer's reply does not come to much. He observes, first, that one of the most objectionable sections, the second, which makes it a felony punishable with penal servitude for not less than seven years to propose even a friendly and peaceful separation of any colony from the British Crown, is a provision under which we have been living in England for the last twenty years without know- ing it, as it is copied from 11 Victoria, c. 48 (passed 22nd April, 1848). This ia true, as far as we can make out its crabbed English, and very absurd it is ; but at least it has never been acted on, nor could have been. Why does not some one of the many members of Parliament who have advocated giving up the Ionian Isles, Gibraltar, Canada, &c., propose its repeal? But there remain the still more monstrous and servile provisions against those who refuse to drink a "loyal toast," or who "write. or publish words disrespectful to Her Majesty," which are peculiar to the colony ; and as to these, our correspondent merely remarks that New South Wales is ashamed, not proud of them, and, whilst recognizing their character, gave them force for two years only, as an act of splendid self-sacrifice, in order to crush out "a new evil in its infancy." That is even worse than we thought. New South Wales should not do what it is ashamed of, for any purpose whatever. She can't root out any evil in its
infancy, by acclimatizing a worse evil in its senility. •
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