Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/194

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
180
TRANSPORTATION

making his family comfortable and independent for life; for, as the emigrants would of course be all settled on the banks of the Brisbane river in the first instance, steam communication with Sydney, which would be established forthwith as a matter of course, would supply them with a ready market for all their surplus produce, whether grain, fruit, pigs, or poultry. And if each detachment of a hundred families should contain such artisans and other operatives as would be required in such a locality, they would have all the more common appliances of civilization at command; while the clergyman and the schoolmaster, forming a necessary part of their parochial establishment, would, in all probability, maintain in their full force and operation all the moral restraints of their native vicinage. In short, as far as the emigrants are concerned, the transition from the state of the humbler classes of society in the mother country would be most desirable, while the benefit to the whole colony of New South Wales would be incalculable.

In regard to the pecuniary and other bearings of such an arrangement upon the government, I would observe, that as the public faith has been virtually pledged for the appropriation of the whole amount of the land-revenue of New South Wales to the encouragement and promotion of