Edinburgh Review.[1] It was a very characteristic piece of writing, and altogether condemnatory of the settlement and all thereto belonging.
"With fanciful schemes of universal good," he wrote, "we have no business to meddle. Why we are to erect penitentiary houses and prisons at the distance of half the diameter of the globe, and to incur the enormous expense of feeding and transporting their inhabitants too, and at such a distance, it is extremely difficult to discover. It is certainly not from any deficiency of barren islands near our own coasts, nor of uncultivated wastes in the interior; and if we were sufficiently fortunate to be wanting in such species of accommodation, we might discover in Canada, or the West Indies, or on the Coast of Africa, a climate malignant enough, or a soil sufficiently sterile to revenge all the injuries which have been inflicted on society by pick-pockets, larcenists and petty felons. …"
"It is foolishly believed that the Colony of Botany Bay unites our moral and commercial interests, and that we shall receive hereafter an ample equivalent, in bales of goods, for all the vices we export."
The writer was, however, thoroughly hopeless. "It is a Colony besides begun under every possible disadvantage; it is too distant to be long governed, or well defended; it is undertaken, not by the voluntary association of individuals, but by Government, and by means of compulsory labour. … It may be a curious consideration to reflect what we are to do with this Colony when it comes to years of discretion. Are we to spend another hundred millions of money in discovering its strength, and to humble ourselves again before a fresh set of Washingtons and Franklins? … Endless blood and treasure will be exhausted to support a tax on kangaroo skins; faithful Commons will go on voting fresh supplies to support just and necessary war; and Newgate, then become a quarter of the world, will evince a heroism not unworthy of the great characters by whom she was originally peopled."
From this time until 1810 the Colony sunk again into
- ↑ See vol. ii., 2nd April, 1803, pp. 30, 42. The Edinburgh Review took more notice of colonial subjects than any other periodical of the time, probably because the Whigs had a very definite (though negative) colonial policy.
