The appropriation from the land-revenue, which the Secretary of State for the Colonies had recommended and sanctioned, towards the maintenance of the colonial police, amounted to forty-five thousand pounds sterling. This amount had previously been paid chiefly by the mother
agreeably to the directions of his superior officer, the Secretary of State. Sir Richard Bourke has placed it on record in a dispatch to the Secretary of State, as his own private opinion, that the settlers would do much better without convicts altogether; or, in other words, that the present system of transportation should be discontinued: bat the principle on which he was bound to act, was, that His Majesty's government did not intend to make any change in that system. With such an opinion on the subject of transportation, His Excellency must necessarily have been of opinion that it was expedient to apply the whole of the land-revenue of the colony for the encouragement and promotion of emigration; but the orders on which he was bound to act in that matter were, that a portion of that revenue was to be appropriated towards the maintenance of the colonial police. And although the governor is assisted in the administration of the affairs of the colony by a legislative council, it is too much, even for Credulity herself, to believe that that respectable body, composed as it is in great measure of government officers and a few easy-going gentlemen under the direct influence of the government, can possibly have a will of its own. A legislative body, composed of such materials, is the most anomalous that can possibly be constituted by associated man: it is a body without a soul, without an understanding, without a will.
