facturers. And although emancipated convicts and their children would doubtless be found everywhere in the Australian territories, they would no where constitute a separate and influential caste in society, like the present emancipists of New South Wales; but would rapidly disappear among the mass of virtuous and industrious inhabitants, as the waters of a river are lost insensibly in the ocean, or as the English convicts and their offspring were at last indistinguishably blended with the virtuous and industrious free emigrant population of Maryland and Virginia. At all events, there would be no such moral curse entailed even by the transportation system on the future population of the Australian colonies, as the existence of negro slavery has already entailed on the American republic.
From their central and highly favourable position on the surface of the globe, the Australian colonies, teeming as they are already with that spirit of enterprise and force of character which are so peculiarly the growth of Britain, cannot fail eventually to exert a powerful influence, either for good or for evil, on a large portion of the family of man. 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
