urnished about the same period,
an extensive and lucrative employment for the colonial craft, and
contributed not less than the sandal wood trade to the
flourishing condition of this port. It was also about this time
that the valuable whale fisheries, which the adjacent seas
afford, were first attempted; but repeated experiment has proved
that the duties which are levied, as well in this country as in
the colony, on oil procured in colonial vessels, amount to a
complete prohibition. Many of the merchants, whose enterprising
spirit prompted them to repeated efforts, in order to bear up
against the overwhelming weight of these duties, have found to
their cost, that they are an insuperable obstacle to the
successful prosecution of these fisheries, which would otherwise
prove an inexhaustible source of wealth to the colony, and
provide a permanent outlet for its redundant population. These
two branches of commerce, so long as they were followed, afforded
a support to great numbers of the colonists, and rendered the
shock which the agricultural body had sustained, less sensible
and alarming. I say these two, because the third has never been
prosecuted but with loss; and has, in fact, proved a vortex which
has devoured a great part of the profits which the othertwo
yielded. For some years, however, these two channels have been so
completely drained, that they are only at present pursued by
desperate adventurers, who seldom or never obtain a return
commensurate with the risk they run, and the capital they employ.
But even during the period of their utmost productiveness, the
number of persons who were immediately engaged in them, or who
abandoned the plough to place themselves behind the counter, was
far from providing a remedy for the disease of the agricultural
body: because in the former instance these two branches of
commerce were only capable of affording employment to a limited
population; and in the latter a capital was necessary, not so
great indeed as had been required to enter successfully on the
grazing system, but yet far more considerable than it was in the
ability of the majority of the colonists to raise. By these
migrations, therefore, the pressure and embarrassment of the
agricultural body, which by this time had gradually lost the
richest and most respectable portion of its members, was but
little, if indeed at all alleviated; and some other expedient
became everyday more and more necessary to be adopted by