Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/11

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ADVERTISEMENT.
v

preponderance to the "Terry Alt and White Boy" elements of their actual population, as might hereafter most injuriously affect the peace and prosperity of the colonies. For as the leading Roman Catholics of New South Wales inform us that their communion already comprises not less than one-third of the whole colonial population, and as it is notorious that at least nineteen-twentieths of the Roman Catholics of that colony consist of convicts and emancipated convicts and their children—chiefly from the southern parts of Ireland;—it is evident that New South Wales, as a British colony, stands peculiarly in need of a free emigrant population of such a character as to neutralize and counteract, and not to increase and aggravate, the peculiar tendencies and characteristics of the south of Ireland population. There are other British colonies, to which the superabundance of that population may be sent with great benefit to all parties and with entire safety; but every intelligent person will surely allow that it ought not to be sent to that colony in particular which has been the general and exclusive receptacle for all the expatriated "Terry Alt and Whiteboyism" of Ireland for the last forty years.

A free emigrant population of such a character as that of the Highlanders and Islanders of Scotland is, both morally and politically speaking, the sort of population which is peculiarly re-