Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/232

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
218
TRANSPORTATION

nies, 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?

In connexion with the subject of transportation, and the means of rendering that mode of punishment really efficient for the future, as well for the prevention of crime as for the reformation of criminals, the extension of colonization along the coasts of New Holland, both within and beyond the present limits of the colony of New South Wales, by means of an extensive emigration of virtuous and industrious families from the mother country, becomes a subject of national importance. 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. 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