Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/195

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AND COLONIZATION.
181

emigration; and, as it is evidently of the utmost consequence to the future welfare of that colony, as well as to the future working of the transportation system, as a species of punishment, that this pledge should be redeemed; it is undeniable, that the sooner any portion of the large balance at present remaining in the colonial treasury-chest can be appropriated in carrying out settlers to any part of the territory, the greater public benefit will accrue from the measure, and the greater probability will there be of rendering transportation really efficient as a punishment. Besides, overburdened as the mother country is at this moment in certain parts of the empire, with a superabundant and unemployed population calling loudly for succour, and looking to emigration as the only source of permanent relief, the proposed appropriation of apart of the colonial land-revenue, in carrying out a considerable number of emigrants to a locality so well adapted for their immediate settlement as Moreton Bay, would evidently be not less beneficial to the mother country than to the colony. Moreover, by the arrangement proposed, the government would have a fair price for their waste land, and a fair equivalent for the convict labour employed in clearing portions of it for free settlers: their security for payment would not only be the