say, virtually enacted by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, that a large portion of the revenue, which had been so pledged and appropriated by his predecessors in office, should be applied towards the perpetual maintenance of the colony of New South Wales as a mere gaol and dunghill for the British empire!
Perceiving, with a sinking of spirits which I cannot well describe, the tendency of this most impolitic arrangement, and anticipating the use that would probably be made of the Secretary of State's license in regard to the land-revenues, by a body composed of such pliant materials as a legislative council, consisting chiefly of government officers holding their appointments at will; I considered it my duty to avail myself of the access, which I fortunately had at the moment, to the public press of the colony, to arouse the virtuous portion of its inhabitants to a due sense of the deep and irreparable injury they were about to sustain, in their best and dearest interests, through the forthcoming parricidal enactment. In this object I was happily by no means unsuccessful. The chord I had touched only required to be struck to produce a powerful vibration all over the colony; and a strong and numerously signed petition to the governor and council, from the respectable inhabitants of the colony, praying
