On the Advantages which the Colony offers for Emigration.
After the gloomy picture which I have drawn of the actual condition of the colony; after having represented both its agricultural and commercial interests as being already not only in a state of impair, but also of increasing dilapidation and ruin, it may appear somewhat paradoxical that I should attempt to wind up the account with an enumeration of the advantages which it holds out to emigration. If due consideration, however, be given to the nature of the ingredients of which the agricultural body is composed; if it be recollected that it consists principally of persons, who have been since their earliest years habituated to every sort of vice and debauchery; of persons bred up in cities, and unacquainted with the arts of husbandry, who had, therefore, to contend against the combined force of an inveterate propensity to the profligate indulgences of their _ancient_ mode of life, and of utter ignorance of the laborious occupations and thrifty arts of their _new_: I say if all these serious impediments to success be impartially weighed, it will be seen that the _anomaly_ is rather _apparent_ than _real_. Nevertheless I do not mean to imply that this colony or its dependencies, present at this moment any very flattering prospects for the _mere agriculturist_. That the _skilful farmer_ would be enabled to obtain an _independent_ and _comfortable subsistence_ is, however, _indubitable_; and the larger his family, provided they were of sufficient age to afford him an effectual co-operation, the greater would be his chance of a successful establishment. Hundreds of this laborious class of people, who in spite of unremitting toil and frugality, find themselves every day getting behind-hand with the world, would undoubtedly better their condition by emigrating to this colony, if there were only a probability that they would be enabled to go on from day to day as they are doing here. In this country they are at best but _tenants_ of the soil they cultivate; whereas there they would be _proprietors_, and the _mere advance_ which would be taking place in the value of their farms, would before many years not only render them _independent_ but even _wealthy_. Of the truth of this assertion, we shall be fully convinced by referring to the price of land on the banks of the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers, the only parts which can be said to be even tolerably colonized. It has already been stated that as far as the river Hawkesbury is navigable, the unimproved land is worth five pounds per acre, and improved land double this amount. This land was at first of no value whatever; because in the infancy of societies, so long as there is an unlimited scope of land of the first quality, which any one may occupy as far as his occasions require, it is evident that there would be no purchasers; since it is absurd to imagine that any one would buy that which he could obtain for nothing. It is only, as Mr. Ricardo has demonstrated, when land of an inferior quality is brought into cultivation, and when the difference in the produce of the two sorts gives the occupier of the one a superiority over the occupier of the other, and renders it as eligible for a person to cultivate land of the first description as a tenant, and to pay the proprietor the difference of produce by way of rent, as to be himself the proprietor of land of the second description; or when the situation of the different appropriated tracts of land does not admit of the conveyance of their produce to market at an equal cost; and thus again gives the owners of those farms which are more contiguous, an advantage over the owners of those which are more remote: I say it is only when societies have made that progress, which begets one or other of these contingencies, or both, that land is of any value whatever. In the course, therefore, of thirty-one years, the tract of land in question, taking the unimproved part as our criterion, since the improvements made in that portion of it, which is in a state of cultivation, may be considered tantamount to the difference in value between the one and the other, has evidently risen to this enormous price, from having been of no worth whatever: or in other words, each acre of land has increased in value during the interval that has elapsed since the foundation of the colony at the rate of 3s. 2 1/2d. per annum; and this too under the most impolitic and oppressive system, to which any colony, perhaps, was ever subjected.