posed, from 5s. to L1 each. Large establishments
required many sheep and watch dogs, and the cost amounted to L8 or L10
per annum. The constables had summary power to destroy canine vagrants
without collars, in town or country.

The Huskisson Act applied the laws of England to the colony, and thus it
became a question whether the English interest of 5 per cent. were not
the limit of lawful usury. The government paid larger amounts on the
deposits of prisoners, and capital on such terms must have forsaken the
country; the council, therefore, declared the restriction inoperative.

These ordinances were the subject of endless and angry discussion. The
feelings of the community were not carefully consulted, and laws in the
main useful, were too often pertinaciously encumbered with provisions
both irritating and needless. The motives of the lawgivers were
canvassed without reserve. They were supposed to employ their powers to
facilitate extortion, in the profits of which they were said to share.

SECTION IX.

The dignity and independence based on landed wealth, is ever the chief
allurement of the emigrant. Whatever his rank, he dreams of the day when
he shall dwell in a mansion planned by himself; survey a wide and
verdant landscape called after his name; and sit beneath the vineyard
his own hands planted. To this common ambition the crown directed its
appeals: acres, by hundreds and thousands, were offered for acceptance.
The imagination of English readers overleaped a tedious interval of
labor and disappointment. The generous impulse silenced the voice of
fear and distrust: they took a last look at the sepulchres of their
fathers, and came forth to establish their children among the founders
of nations.

The distribution of waste lands, a most important function of colonial
governors, has been a source of incessant perplexity and discontent.
Sometimes they have been granted with ridiculous parsimony, and at
others with scandalous profusion. Every minister has proposed some
novelty: the regulations of one year have been abandoned the next, and
the emigrant who loitered on his way found the system changed, which had
induced him to set forth.

The stewardship of the royal domain has been liable to difficulties
peculiar to itself, beside the full average of official injustice and
corruption.

The endowment of emancipists with land, an American practice,[161] was
unsuccessfully revived in New Holland, and contin