purchasers, as they will acquire not merely the stipulated equivalent for their purchase-money in freehold land, but, moreover, a right to what will necessarily be for some time to come a very large extent of pasturage. For example, the purchasers of the first 100,000 acres of land will have the privilege of depasturing the rest of the district, and will only lose that privilege by degrees, as the settlement shall fill up, and as their freehold land shall thereby increase in value.
Ecclesiastical and Educational Endowments.
With reference to the contribution for the establishment and endowment of ecclesiastical and educational institutions, the Association feel that it is unnecessary here to enter into a discussion of the utility of providing a fund for these purposes. The purchasers of land in this settlement will consist entirely of members of the Church of England; and it is supposed that few of these will question the desirableness of making adequate provision for the building a sufficient number of churches and schools, and maintaining, in its complete form, a branch of the ministry of the church, proportionate to the lay population of the settlement.
That an excessive provision for this purpose is not made, the following calculation will show.
Before going into it, the Association wish distinctly to point out—what is applicable, indeed, to the whole subject, but peculiarly so to the present branch of it,—that such anticipations and calculations are at present wholly hypothetical. They are fully aware, that before they could be realized, the approval and sanction of various authorities must be obtained: without which, indeed, even if they could proceed, they would be quite unwilling to do so. But it has been their object in these remarks to hold out to view the idea of a colonial settlement complete in all its parts; and they feel most strongly that such an idea would fall very short of that description unless it included, and that not as a vague generality, but in that amount of details which is here presented, the element which has just been mentioned.
Assuming, by way of hypothesis, that out of the territory of one million acres to be allotted to this settlement, two hundred thousand will be sold in the first year or two, and the remainder appropriated to pasturage, the Association will have at its disposal two funds, each a little exceeding 200,000l.: one appropriated to immigration purposes, the other to ecclesiastical and educational establishments and endowments.
The former funds, under the system of partial contributions to passages, instead of defraying the whole cost of them, which the Association intends to adopt, will probably enable the Association to forward 15,000 persons to the settlement.
The Association, considering the large surface over which the population will be distributed, calculates that twenty clergymen, and as many schoolmasters, will not be more than are requisite to establish and maintain that high religious and educational character, which the Association hopes, with the Divine blessing, that this settlement will possess.
Assuming that the churches, parsonage-houses, and schools will be constructed of wood upon foundations of stone carried to a height of three or four feet above the ground, the following will be an approximate estimate of their cost:—
