Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/226

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212
TRANSPORTATION

ment of that colony, if these means are not plied to the utmost.

After what has already been advanced, it is perhaps unnecessary to enlarge on the very unwise and unwarrantable mode in which the land fund of the Australian colonies has hitherto been appropriated,—under the authority of Boards and Agents in London, having no interest in its judicious appropriation, and no adequate knowledge of the subject,—in inundating the colonies with vice and misery, whether in the form of free emigrant females, conveyed in whole ship-loads to New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land, without friends and without natural protectors; or in that of free emigrant mechanics and agricultural labourers, collected by shipowners and shipbrokers, many of whom have proved equally destitute of moral character and of fitness for any useful employment. The cases of favourable exception (for they have been but exceptions in both of these classes of emigrants) have shown how much real benefit the colony would derive from an extensive and well-selected immigration; but the general result of the mode in which the immigration funds of New South Wales have been appropriated for the last few years, has at length induced the colonial government to dispense with the services of London Boards and Agents alto-