tion, and without any materials out of which an effective police could have been formed, or a school of virtue and religion established. What could be more preposterous? The most worthless of their species were to be taught the virtues of integrity, justice, and purity, by being brought into mutual contact; they were to be trained to generous and manly feeling, by the degra dation of slavery; they were to become sober, contented, and religious, by the force of military compulsion! The result has been what might have been anticipated. Instead of a school of reformation, Botany Bay has proved a seminary of vice; the temple which our benevolent rulers thought they were raising to humanity and virtue, has literally been converted into a den of thieves; and the purgatory which their pious zeal had contrived for chastizing and purifying the guilty, has been transformed into the most lively representation of pandemonium.

We were disappointed in not finding, in the work before us, any account of the original settlement of the colony, or of its history to the present day; and should have been glad had our limits permitted us to supply the deficiency; because the circumstances are not generally known, and even a slight sketch would have been sufficient to excite a virtuous regret, that a country so admirably adapted, in every essential particular, for the nursery of a great community, should have been blighted by a population, whose increasing and hopeless depravity might fill even the most sanguine philanthropist with despair. A few loose and undigested notices, however, are all that we can at present offer.

Governor Phillip having in vain looked for a favourable situation in Botany Bay, the original destination of the colony, was so fortunate as to discover, in the adjacent inlet of Port Jackson, a noble and capacious harbour, equal to any yet known in the world; and in one of the coves of this fine bason, he determined to found his infant town.

"The spot chosen for debarkation," says Mr. Collins, in his interesting but prolix narrative, from which we take our information, was at the head of the cove, near a run of fresh water, which stole silently along through a very thick wood, the stillness of which had then, for the first time since the creation, been interrupted by the rude sound of the labourer's axe, and the downfal of its ancient inhabitants; a stillness and tranquillity which, from that day, were to give place to the voice of labour, the confusion of camps and towns, and the busy hum of its possessors. That these did not bring with them minds not to be changed by time or place,' was fervently to have been wished; and, if it were possible, that, on taking possession of nature, as we had thus done, in her simplest, purest

garb, we might not sully that purity by the introduction of vice, profaneness, and immorality."

Scarcely had the labour of establishing the new colony been commenced, when the character of the settlers began to display itself. Depredations of all kinds were committed; the working tools were secreted; the convicts absconded in the woods; and labour was almost at a stand. It was now discovered that a most egregious error had been committed, in not including in the plan of colonization & considerable proportion of respectable individuals, who might have been appointed as overseers of the convicts. Felons were of necessity to be the superintendents of felons, and the consequences were as might have been expected. Punishment became necessary, but proved ineffectual. Crime was added to crime. Even the soldiers themselves, corrupted by the general depravity, were detected in embezzling the public stores; and the governor, a man of talents and judgment, soon found his situation beyond expression difficult and embarrassing. The civil history of the colony, indeed, is little else than a tissue of crimes and punishments, on which it would be too disgusting and too humiliating to dwell. The intelligent individuals at the head of the administration did, we believe, what men in their circumstances could do, to stem the tide of corruption; but in vain. A police was established, but its agents were themselves accomplices in the crimes which they were appointed to suppress. Churches were built, but they were burnt to the ground: new kinds of punishment were invented; but where so many necessarily escaped detection, they ceased to be viewed with terror: rewards were held out to industry and virtue; but where these qualities were held in contempt, they excited no emulation. Year after year, the moral character of the colonists, if they could ever have been said to possess a moral character, was more and more deteriorated. Fraud sharpened fraud; perverted ingenuity produced expertness in crimes; and the profligate hardened each other in profligacy. Every arrival of convicts brought a fresh infusion of poison, and heaped additional materials on the fermenting mass of corruption. That state of society, indeed, is frightful and remediless, in which all the common incitements of praise and blame are on the side of depravity; in which talent is only esteemed when it makes some horrid discovery in the science of vice, or enlarges the boundaries of licentiousness.

Although the colonial government experienced the most cruel embarrassments, from the nature of the living material on which it had to work, it did not relax its efforts, nor suffer itself to despond. In the first year of the settlement, besides the town of

Sidney, which was destined to become the capital of the colony, andther establishment was formed near the head of the harbour, at the distance of about fifteen miles, which afterwards rose to the size of a town, and obtained the name of Paramatta. Here the soil proved to be of richer quality; and, in this neighbourhood, the first successful efforts in agriculture were made. The land was originally cleared and cultivated entirely on the public account, the convicts working for behoof of government, under the command of overseers; and, in 1792, four years after the establishment of the colony, the government farm comprised somewhat more than 1000 acres of crop, of which 800 were in maize, and the remainder in wheat and barley. Meanwhile, some encouragement had been given to the private efforts of individuals; and although only one farm had been occupied before the month of July 1791, yet, in October 1792, when Governor Phillip took a survey of the colony, previous to his resigning his command, nearly 700 acres, of which 530 acres were actually in crop, had been cleared for cultivation by 67 settlers; and three years afterwards, the cultivated land belonging to individuals did not amount to less than 2547 acres ;-so much more efficiently do men employ their powers when labouring for their own advantage. In the year 1794, a new agricultural establishment was formed on the Hawksbury, the only river then discovered in the settlement, which, on account of the superior quality of the soil, although about 20 miles from the nearest cultivated ground, soon became a favourite spot; and in five years this district could boast of 3450 acres of wheat and maize, exceeding, by 600 acres, the crop of the rest of the colony. To the extraordinary fertility of this part of the settlement, however, there was a serious drawback. The Hawksbury was discovered to be frequently subject to very tremendous floods, occasioned by the neighbourhood of a range of hills which had been seen at a distance to the west, and which, from their appearance, had obtained the name of the Blue Mountains. At such times, the water was found to rise to the remarkable height of 90, or even 100 feet above its usual level, inundating the whole country as far as the eye could reach, and carrying desolation in every direction. Such calamities, however, did not happen oftener than once in three or four years; and, though they gave no warning of their approach, were compensated by so many advantages, that they did not arrest the progress of agriculture even on the very banks of the river.

In 1801, when the number of souls in the colony amounted to 5547, the land in cultivation had increased to somewhat more than 9000 acres; and, in the same year, the live stock consist

ed of 6757 sheep, 1293 black cattle, 243 horses, 1259 goats, and 4766 hogs. From this period, the means of the colony increased with great rapidity; and the attention of the settlers having been turned to breeding, in preference to agriculture, we find, that in the month of November 1817, the last year of which a census has reached this country, there were in the settlement no fewer than 3072 horses, 44,758 black cattle, and 170,420 sheep.

Since the first year of the century, great changes have taken place in the colony in other respects. Two towns have been founded within the district of Sidney, that of Liverpool on George River, at the head of Botany Bay, and that of Windsor on the Hawksbury. Some important additions, also, to our knowledge of the country have been made, both in the interior and along the line of the coast. The industry and zeal of the present governor, General Macquarie, have enabled him not only to penetrate through the Blue Mountains, but to give access to the extensive regions beyond them, by an excellent road of 180 miles in length; and, besides making some important discoveries, he has founded a new settlement in that inland situation, to which he has given the name of Bathurst. In a northern direction, the Coal River, where the town of Newcastle has lately been built, has opened new resources to the colony, in abundance of coal, and of lime made from shells, both of which can be procured at a trifling expense of labour, and without inland carriage. Towards the south, Van Diemen's Land, which, ever since the year 1799, has been known to be detached from the Continent, and to form an island of considerable extent, with many allurements for settlers, has been surveyed and colonized; the settlement which had been early made at Norfolk Island for the cultivation of flax, having been previously abandoned. It is now fifteen years since the foundation of a colony was first laid in this island; and, by the last returns, the white inhabitants amounted, we believe, to about 3000, of whom upwards of 1000 are established at Hobart Town, the residence of a lieutenant-governor.

These preliminary observations will prepare our readers for some account of the information and remarks contained in the work of Mr. Wentworth.

This publication consists of four parts, of which the first comprises a statistical account of the settlements in New Holland and Van Diemen's Land; the second exhibits the operation of the colonial government for the last fifteen years; the third suggests various alterations in the present policy pursued in the colony; and the fourth proposes a new system of government, affords hints for the reduction of the

public expences, and details the advantages which the colony offers to emigration.

With regard to the first of these, we shall at present say nothing, as the information it contains will be more conveniently alluded to afterwards. The second presents a most revolting, and we fear a too faithful picture of the misgovernment of the colony. The power of the governor is absolute-he is uncontrolled by a council he has a commanding influence over the courts of justice, both civil and criminal, of which he has the nomination; and, what is the most monstrous licence of all, he has the power of taxation vested in his own person. He can, in short, invade the property and violate the personal liberty of the colonists at pleasure. It is vain to say that redress may be obtained for acts of oppression and injustice in the courts at home. No person will pretend that any thing but the mere shadow of a check against abuse can exist in a superintendence at the distance of half the globe. It is true that the present governor is a man of sense, humanity, and virtue, and yet even he seems sometimes to have yielded to the temptations of uncontrolled power, and his con. duct has already been the subject of parliamentary discussion; but were his government altogether immaculate, this could afford no argument in favour of his dangerous and unconstitutional authority, nor any security against future oppression. On this subject, indeed, we have unfortunately no occasion to have recourse to general reasoning. The most flagrant instances of tyranny and violence disgraced the government of Captain Bligh, General Macquarie's predecessor; and so strong an impression have they made on our author, that, when he alludes to them, he evidently allows his indignation to get the better of his temper.

"Leaseholds cancelled," says he, "houses demolished without the smallest compensation, on the plea of public utility, but in reality from motives of private hatred and revenge; freemen imprisoned on arbitrary warrants issued without reference to the magistracy, and even publicly flogged in the most illegal and oppressive manner.-Such were the events which crowded the government of a wretch, whom it would be as superfluous to name as it is needless to hold him up to the execration of posterity."

That a government should exist under the dominion of Great Britain, where such acts of tyranny and oppression are possible, is indeed disgraceful to our national character; and even though we were to allow that something of personal resentment has added too high a colouring to the representation, which we by no means know to be the case, enough has transpired from other quarters as to the transactions of the period alluded to, not merely to stamp infamy on the individuals who held the reins of the colonial government with so imperious and cruel a hand, but strikingly to expose the danger of a form of administration which admitted of such wanton aggressions.

It is, however, more easy to perceive the evil than to point out an effectual remedy. The scheme proposed by Mr. Wentworth, in the fourth part of his work, seems extremely chimerical. He suggests the creation of a legislative assembly, to be chosen by the general voice indiscriminately from among the free settlers of a certain property, whether they had originally been convicts or not. It may be