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· Once more in Ross, as in Brighton and Bothwell, he comp lained
to the Colonial Secretary about the local police force which made little
attempt to keep order in the town. Hal l's residence was on the outskirts
and he and his family of young girls were frequent ly annoyed by the bad
behaviour of the worst characters in the district, both male and female,
who congregated in a nearby hut . In spite of Hall's complaints to the
Chief Constab le, the local police participated in rather than dispelled
their activities.
Although Hall's position as a salaried officer of the Government
did not permit him to engage in political controversy, he, nevertheless,
took an educated man's intelligent interest in the management of his
country and held strong, considered opinions of his own concerning it .
Certainly, he would have been less than human if he had not been affected
by the excitement which pervaded the political arena of the colony in
1850- 1851. The doubts and misgivings which assailed many of the
colonists on the introduction of the Probation System into Van Diemen 's
Land in the early forties , had not been allayed by any visible results
over the years , but rather increased and crystallized into open, direct
opposition, in spite of Hampton 's sincere and earnest efforts to improve
the Convict Department . Many settlers felt that the island and they
themselves deserved a better fate than continung to be the rubbish tip
for thousands of British crimina ls. With the formation of the Anti­
Transportation League on February 11, 1849 , this opposition spoke with
a loud and penetrating voice. Like many organizations whose cause is
basically worthy, the League suffered from the over-enthusiasm of some
of its memb ers whose zealousness was thought by more moderate memb ers of
the ommunity to be too harsh . Thus , when a measure of responsible
government was granted' by the British Government and Legislative Council
elections instituted for October 1851, the people ranged themselves into
two factions , the moderates and the radicals, and feelings ran high.
Hall's sympathies were with the moderates. He believed that every man
had the right to vote as his conscience dictated in a spirit of
independence, and that the utmost independence of thought and action was
perfectly compatible with the utmost loyalty to the Governor, as the
Representative of the Queen, whom he had been taught by his religious
principles to honour. Thus he was indignant and outraged by many of
the electioneering practices carried out by the Anti-Transportationists,
- especially the burning of an effigy of Denison, whom he believed to be
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