71
“By the Ellen, Government schooner, we have intelligence from King George’s Sound to the end of October, and, we lament to say, not altogether of a favourable nature, the settlers there remaining in a state of torpor, awaiting the enlivening influence of assistance from Government to open roads into the interior of the country, where they can find soil and pasturage adapted for agricultural purposes. That the settlers may reasonably require this assistance to a limited extent we are ready to admit, and have little doubt the subject has been under his Excellency the Governor’s consideration; but we would caution the settlers at the Sound against embarking too generally in agricultural pursuits, on a spot where their capital can be applied to much greater advantage to themselves and the community, in the fisheries or sealing. If strangers can make it answer their purpose to come to their harbours, and within a short distance of their doors, for these commodities, surely a little activity and enterprize, coupled with the means which we know the inhabitants possess, would soon place them in a state of positive independence, beyond any thing they can anticipate to realize after numerous years of toil and anxiety in the pursuits of agriculture. Some, from choice, their previous habits of life influencing their determination, will direct their attention to these pursuits, and they, from experience, may succeed; but the mere amateur agriculturist must inevitably fail. If wealth is required, or if it be the patriotic object of advancing the settlement (some having denied that they are in search of riches, but merely social ease and the ordinary enjoyments of life), the end can be most speedily attained by establishing a Whaling Company; to which enterprize, we are persuaded, increased activity would be given, by the ready co-operation of some of our monied neighbours.”
In the same number of that Journal appears a petition addressed to the Home Government, and signed by sixteen settlers at King George’s Sound, soliciting to have it made a convict station. This petition fully admits that the colony was originally founded on the principle of free labour; and that the general opinion of the settlers formerly was, that the presence of convicts would be objectionable. It acknowledges, that the settlement “possesses equal, if not superior advantages to either of the sister colonies of
