John Dunmore Lang

“ And surely a prospect of this kind, which, I am confident, from more than thirteen years' observation and experience in the colony of New South Wales, would be realized in ten thousand instances, under a judicious and well-regulated system of free emigration, is much more attractive to the eye of enlightened philanthropy, than the one which invariably presents itself in the writings of those, who, with comparatively little knowledge of the subject, affect to decry transportation as a species of punishment altogether—I mean, the penitentiary and the gibbet. ”

“ After what has already been advanced, it is perhaps unnecessary to enlarge on the very unwise and unwarrantable mode in which the land fund of the Australian colonies has hitherto been appropriated,—under the authority of Boards and Agents in London, having no interest in its judicious appropriation, and no adequate knowledge of the subject,—in inundating the colonies with vice and misery, whether in the form of free emigrant females, conveyed in whole ship-loads to New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land, without friends and without natural protectors ”

“ With such a system in actual operation, who can doubt the policy of the maxim of Napoleon,—"Ships, Colonies, and Commerce,"—as it is thus the legitimate use of a well-regulated colony to afford profitable employment to numerous ships, and a powerful stimulus to commerce and manufactures? ”

“ For while it cannot be denied, that convicts undergoing their sentence of transportation could be employed most usefully for the public, in preparing new settlements for the reception of such emigrants, in the manner recommended at Moreton Bay; it must also be evident, that the progressive allocation of ticket of leave men, and convicts enjoying conditional pardons, in the immediate vicinity of well-regulated free settlements, affords the best prospect of their ultimate and entire reformation. ”

“ That influence is already felt, both for good and for evil, in the neighbouring islands of New Zealand, situated within six days' sail of Sydney, and containing a native population of upwards of half a million of souls. It will ere long be felt over the ten thousand populous isles of the Western Pacific, as colonization extends to the northward on the Australian continent. ”

“ Now, at the rate of one hundred families for each ship, a number which would require a vessel of 500 tons, the conveyance of these families to their colonial destination will afford profitable employment for six months together to thirty-three first class British merchant-ships, having crews of twenty-five or thirty men each, entirely at the expense of the colony of New South Wales ”

“ In such settlements as might thus be formed progressively in ten thousand localities on the coasts of New Holland, persons of this class would find a high tone of moral feeling generally prevalent, and the vices that uniformly distinguish a population of exclusively convict origin universally discouraged. They would see honest industry rewarded with comfortable circumstances and the prospect of independence ”

“ As for the emigrants themselves, they consist of families and individuals, who, before leaving the mother country, are in all likelihood a dead weight on the community; as they can only obtain subsistence by elbowing out of employment other deserving individuals of the same class, whose circumstances will consequently be greatly improved by their emigration ”

“ At the rate of £30 for each family, the amount of bounty recently fixed by the colonial executive, exclusive of children, the present colonial land revenue will pay for the annual emigration of three thousand three hundred families of farm labourers, shepherds, and mechanics, from Great Britain and Ireland. ”

“ They will thus materially augment the capital and the raw produce, as well as the population of the colony, and assist in developing its vast resources; while, besides consuming probably four times the amount of British manufactures that labourers of a similar class can afford to purchase in the mother country, they will contribute to sustain the vast fabric of British commerce, by also paying for the freight of these manufactures from England in British vessels. ”

“ Their much higher rate of wages, and their other superior opportunities of accumulating property, will also enable them, if at all industrious and frugal, eventually to become proprietors of sheep and cattle, houses and land. ”