Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/47

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
AND COLONIZATION.
33

ten thousand convictions for sedition be the result?

But let the superintendents and convict labourers be only transferred to New South Wales, and there will be no fault found by any party, at whatever rate they should contract for the formation of a thousand miles of good road, for the construction of several good harbours in suitable localities, or for clearing, levelling, draining, and trenching any extent of land. Various public works of this kind are urgently required by the colony at present, but cannot be accomplished for want of labour, although the colonial government is both able and willing to pay for that labour from the colonial treasury. Nay, the greater the amount of free labour that shall be imported in future into New South Wales, and employed in agriculture and grazing, in commerce and in the mechanical arts, the greater will be the colonial demand for labour of the very kind for which the Archbishop's superintendents would be inclined to contract; and the more able will the colony be to pay for that labour. Supposing, therefore, that all other things were equal, it would be both the interest and the duty of government to employ convict labour at penal settlements beyond seas, rather than at home.

This principle, I am happy to state, is in perfect