Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/157

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AND COLONIZATION.
143

country still farther to the westward, along the left bank of the Morumbidgee, which is at present the boundary of the colony to the southward and westward, is also occupied for pastoral purposes by numerous colonial squatters from within the present limits of the colony. These squatters are all rapidly increasing their flocks and herds, and thereby enriching themselves through the permissive occupancy of the Crown land beyond the present limits,—a privilege which has hitherto been most judiciously allowed them by the colonial executive: for these persons are thus acquiring the means of making extensive purchases of land from the government in their respective localities, whenever the colonial boundary shall have been extended to Bass's Straits; and are thus forming an important link in the new chain or system of Australian colonization.

Now, as it is equally the interest of the British government and of the colonial executive, as well as of all classes of free colonists in New South Wales, that the revenue arising from the sale of Crown land in that colony should be as large as possible, and that the number of free emigrant agricultural labourers, shepherds, and mechanics, which this revenue has been appropriated to import into the colonial territory, should also be increased to the utmost; I would beg leave to sug-