Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/230

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
216
TRANSPORTATION

manufactures that labourers of a similar class can afford to purchase in the mother country, they will contribute to sustain the vast fabric of British commerce, by also paying for the freight of these manufactures from England in British vessels.

In a moral and religious light, the introduction of a numerous and virtuous free emigrant population into the colony of New South Wales, cannot fail to afford a highly gratifying prospect to all who are sincerely desirous of promoting the best interests of that important dependency of the empire. I acknowledge, indeed, that if things had continued to be carried on in the colony in the way in which they have hitherto been managed, the free emigrants themselves would have had but a sorry prospect for the future in regard to their own spiritual welfare, and the intellectual and moral improvement of their offspring: but now that every hundred free adults can obtain a salary of £100 per annum from the colonial government for the support of a clergyman of their own communion, in whatever part of the colony they may choose to settle, besides liberal assistance for the establishment of a school for their children, there is evidently much less to be feared in these important respects,—nay, there is every thing to be hoped for the future.

From the preceding enumeration of the benefits