Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/225

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AND COLONIZATION.
211

of virtuous and industrious families and individuals into the colonial territory, will be indispensably necessary, to counteract the evil influence and effects that have unhappily resulted from the mismanagement of the transportation system in times past; so will a greatly increased and well-selected emigration be equally necessary to counteract the natural influence and effects of that system, even under the best management, for the future. In such circumstances, the new arrangement of selling Crown land in the Australian colonies, and devoting the whole proceeds of such sales to the encouragement and promotion of emigration,—an arrangement, of which the results have already so greatly exceeded all previous expectation,—would seem to be a provision beneficently intended by Divine Providence for the recovery of the moral health of the body politic of these colonies, and for its future preservation. Indeed, it may be safely affirmed, that no other government, either in ancient or modern times, has ever had such ample means provided to its hand for the healing of the moral diseases of its people, as are at present possessed by the government of New South Wales; and correspondingly great and awful, therefore, will be the moral responsibility of those who shall in future be entrusted with the govern-