enough for its object, it will be the same as no price at all. To begin with, no price would be absurd. I look upon 12s. as no price, in this sense. It is not a hired-labour price. Beginning with that price, there will be no experiment, no experience of anything but disaster.
"How do you know that nobody will buy land at a sufficient price? That experiment has not yet been tried. That experiment may be tried here without risk to anyone.
"We wholly disagree, you see, on what you call principle. I must now consider you as one of the opponents of my principle.
"On the two points in your letter which you place under the head of expediency, I again disagree with you. I think that people here will be more ready to pay a sufficient than an insufficient price; and I sincerely hope that, with an insufficient price, the colony may not be founded.
"The supposition that, 'if labourers were wanting,' the want could be supplied by means of the 17th clause of the Act, appears to me to be a delusion. After the want was felt, four months must elapse before the commission could even know of it; and four more before they could supply it. But in the course of those eight months the want would have disappeared; the colony would have been made like Swan River during that period of its existence when labourers were glad to emigrate to Van Diemen's Land; and the new supply of labourers would not even find employment. The 17th clause of the Act may help to prevent, but cannot cure, a want of labourers for hire.
"We wholly disagree, you see, as to both principle and expediency.
"I am obliged to you for having spoken to the commissioners, as you have thereby saved me, and my plan of colonisation, from all responsibility as to the success of this undertaking. My firm belief is that, if the
