8 PLANS FOR COLONISING 1783-6 4. The settlement of the country would not tend to '^ de- isTanders populato the parent State/' as the settlers would be princi- ■ pally collected from the Friendly Islands and China; the only men required from England being a few skilled workmen, who might be drawn from the ships sent out on the service. The 5. The American colonists who had been loyal to the loyalists. Crowu in the War of Independence would find in New South Wales a fertile, healthy soil, far preferable to their own/' where they might be established ^^with a greater prospect of success than in any other place hitherto pointed out for them." Exponae. 6. The exponse involved in carrying out this plan could not exceed £3,000, seeing that ships-of-war might be as cheaply fed and paid in the South Sea as in the British Channel. Economical 7. The cxpeuse of transporting felons might be con- tion siderably reduced by sending them to the new territory, while the danger of their returning from it would be much less than in the case of other countries. The transporta-* tion might be cheaply carried out by means of the China ships of the East India Company, which, by altering their route after leaving the Cape of Good Hope, might land the felons on the coast of New South Wales, and then proceed to their destination, origrinofthe While the identity of these schemes is obvious, it is not to Botin^" less clear that they formed the starting-point of the expe- dition subsequently sent out. Although it assumed a very different shape when actually executed, we have only to read Lord Sydne/s letter to the Treasury of the 18th August, 1786,* and the instructions to Governor Phillip on his departure, to see that the whole scheme, modified, as it was, by the exigencies of the transportation question, originated in the plan formulated by Matra and revised by Sir George Young. Very little is said in the official documents with reference to the commercial or political ♦ Post, p. 435. Digitized by VjOOQIC
