Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/290

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272

Sentinel and Stewart's Dispatch, the latest being of the date of 30th January, 1835. I shall shortly advert to the different topics contained in them.

I see —— has made himself active in getting up a West Australian Company. It is a dangerous thing to meddle with; the blame of failure is sure to be visited on the projector of the scheme, and instances of ill success are certain to occur, if not of general failure. If, by the slightest misrepresentation or exaggeration, any individual finds himself misled, the consciousness of injury done to such person must surely be accompanied with great remorse. It is for this cause I have been so cautious in my journals to you. I thank God I have not to charge myself with endeavouring to induce any person to come out. It is this feeling I dare say which makes Sir James Stirling now so cautious and silent. He has already suffered severely in mind from the reproaches and maledictions which have been heaped upon him by those who had only themselves to blame. "How came you to bring us to such a miserable place?" was the general clamour. That miserable place has already been established to a degree which is surprising, when calmly considered as an isolated colony in only the sixth year of its existence. Recollect, it is not to be compared with the instantaneous maturity of a new town in America, which is but as the hiving off of a vigorous and full-grown swarm. But here is an isolated colony in an uninhabited wilderness, with an unknown climate, new soil unaccustomed to production, remote from friends, and to which assistance is dealt with a niggardly hand, where all provisions, stock, and necessaries have to be procured from other, distant, jealous, and unfriendly people, and procured by means of merchants who thrive in proportion to their exactions.

If this scheme of the W. A. Company should still continue when this reaches you, there is a block of land at Leschenault Inlet, consisting of 100,000 acres, belonging to Colonel Latour