infallibly ensure to the mother country ample and speedy repayment for every farthing of outlay, in the way of superintendence, maintenance, Sec, provided a judicious system of management should be devised and enforced for the future. For in regard to the latter of these modes of employing convict labour; as the increase of value, of which property is susceptible in a new country, from the mere increase of population, is incredible in England; it is fully in the power of the mother country, by taking a judicious advantage of this fact, to repay herself eventually for all her outlay in the maintenance of such portion of her convicts as should be employed in clearing the way for the progressive settlement of a free emigrant population. Besides, the severity of the labour, and the hardships to be otherwise encountered by the convict, might, by these different sorts of employment, be graduated in some measure according to the degree of his criminality; while, in the event of his obtaining conditional freedom, he might nevertheless be confined to a settlement or district, in which, ardent spirits being prohibited, and other unnecessary indulgences withheld, the probability of his ultimate reformation would be tenfold greater than in the present settlements of New South Wales.
Indeed, I would consider it one of the most im-
