nt discrimination had not interposed a more
marked line between those convicts deserving emancipation, and those
whose services are still wanted on the roads and bridges of the colony.

OF THE COLONY OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

There is no country in which labour appears to be more required to render
it available to, and habitable by, civilised men, than New South Wales or
Australia. Without labour, the inhabitants must be savages, or, at least,
such helpless people as we find the aborigines. The squatters' condition
is intermediate, temporary, and one of necessity. That country without
navigable rivers, intersected by rocky ranges, and subject to uncertain
seasons, is unfavourable to agriculture and trade; to social intercourse,
and to the moral and physical prosperity of civilised man. With equal
truth, it may be observed, that there is no region of earth susceptible
of so much improvement, solely by the labour and ingenuity of man. If
there be no navigable rivers, there are no unwholesome savannas; if there
are rocky ranges, they afford, at least, the means of forming reservoirs
of water; and, although it is there uncertain when rain may fall, it is
certain that an abundant supply does fall; and the hand of man alone is
wanting to preserve that supply and regulate its use. In such a clime,
and under such a sun, that most important of elements in cultivation,
water, could thus be rendered much more subservient to man's use than it
is in other warm regions, where, if the general vegetation be more
luxuriant, the air is less salubrious. Sufficient water for all purposes
of cultivation, health, and enjoyment, is quite at the command of art and
industry in this most luxuriant of climates. Thus, the peculiar
disadvantages Australia presents in her wild state, are such as would
greatly enhance the value of such a country under the operation of human
industry. In such a climate, for instance, an abundance of water would be
found a much greater luxury when retained, distributed, and adjusted, by
such means, to man's uses, than where an abundance is but the natural
product of cloudy skies and frequent rains. Where natural resources
exist, but require art and industry for their development, the field is
open for the combination of science and skill, the profitable investment
of capital, and the useful employment of labour. Such is New South Wales.

But the age of such adaptations there is still to come. The future is too
much specula