raised by the common industry, would be able to maintain itself as far as food was concerned. The difference of expense, however, it was added, between this mode of disposing of the convicts of the country and that of the usual ineffectual one, was too trivial to be a consideration with His Majesty's Government, 'at least in comparison with the great object to be attained by it, especially now the evil' (the convict element) 'is increased to such an alarming degree, from the inadequacy of all other expedients that have hitherto been tried or suggested.'
The advantages likely to result to the new settlement from the cultivation of the New Zealand hemp or flax plant were then alluded to. The supply of hemp was of great consequence to Great Britain as a naval power—the production of hemp by felons has a certain suggestive humour—and already English manufacturers of rope and canvass believed that the New Zealand material made better canvass than that grown in Europe, and reported that a ten-inch cable of New Zealand hemp was superior in strength to one of eighteen inches made of the European plant. The Government had also no doubt but that 'most of the Asiatic productions'—none were specified—could be cultivated in the new colony, and that, in a few years after its foundation, recourse to European countries by England for such commodities would be unnecessary. The possibility of exploiting the vast kauri forests of New Zealand for masts and other
