Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/127

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OF PORT PHILLIP.
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to its wants, and that it is indispensible to its future prosperity that a periodical supply of emigrants from the mother country should be introduced into it, they nevertheless, in arriying at this conclusion, deem it necessary to specify the description and number of immigrants that it may hereafter be deemed necessary to introduce within a given period, inasmuch as they feel persuaded that a large, if not the entire, amount of the difficulty now experienced by a portion of the labouring population in Sydney, arising from want of employment in their respective handicraft trades, is referable to the fact that this class of persons ought never to have been introduced into the colony at all, or at all events only in much smaller proportion than that in which they were actually brought to it. The evil thus created to the colony is great. Its resources have to a large extent been expended in the introduction of a class of persons unsuited to its wants—unproductive, so far as regards its great staple commodity, and who, from the want of work, and the consequent cry of distress amongst them, discredit the statement that the species of labour really applicable to, and indispensible for, the country is needed. Many of the artisans brought to the colony by the land fund are now quitting it, and several are proceeding to South America, and, by the expression of their disappointed feelings, (although several are carrying with them considerable sums of money, the accumulation of past earnings in the colony,) conveyed to their friends and connections in the mother country, are likely to create erroneous and unfounded impressions as to the real capabilities of the colony as an eligible field for immigration.

"Neither has the selection that has hitherto been made of even pastoral and farm labourers in the United Kingdom been unexceptionable in its character. Labourers burdened with numerous and young families have formed no inconsiderable proportion of those who have been sent to the colony at the charge of the land fund. However desirable it may be to have (and in many respects it is undoubtedly so) the basis of a future population thus presented to us, its advantages are counterbalanced by corresponding difficulties. The younger members of such families are incapable of aiding in the production of means for their own subsistence, and, when very numerous, form a heavy burthen to the employer. A shepherd, with a