146
TRANSPORTATION
be supposed, that in the present age of steam-conveyance, any great inequality in the price of land, any more than in the price of labour or in that of provisions, can possibly be maintained long between two settlements so easily accessible from each other both by sea and land, however differently they may have been originally constituted in other respects.[1]
But there is also a large increase of the land revenue of New South Wales to be expected from the sale of town allotments. In a letter, which I
- ↑ It is the general desire, however, of the free colonists of New South Wales, and it has also been a special recommendation of a committee of the Legislative Council of that colony, with a view to the encouragement and promotion of emigration to its extensive territory, that respectable free emigrants arriving from England at their own charges, with the view of settling in the colony, should each be allowed to purchase one or two sections, that is, 640 or 1280 acres of waste or Crown land, at the established minimum price, wherever they can find an eligible locality, without being liable to the mortification and disappointment of being outbidden at a public sale by some colonial land-shark, after all their trouble and annoyance in traversing the country, perhaps, for months together. It is also the desire of the colonists generally, and the recommendation of a committee of the Legislative Council, that every such emigrant should also be allowed a certain drawback from the purchase-money of his land, to cover the expense of his passage out. In the propriety of both these suggestions I entirely concur.
