ons were admitted by the secretary of state, who quietly
observed that he had been advised that sugar could not be considered
deleterious. This is the last attempt at protective legislation.

To benefit the rural interest the governor proposed a grand scheme of
irrigation. An eminent engineer, Major Cotton, was employed to report on
the subject, and suggested the detention of the waters of the vast lakes
which overflow from the heights of the western mountains. A rate to be
imposed on the various estates was to discharge the cost. Thus in those
seasons of drought which sometimes occur the lowlands would be made
increasingly fertile. The immediate object--the employment of probation
labor at the colonial cost--detracted something from the charms of the
project. Nor did it seem just that the settlers should risk the ultimate
cost of an undertaking they could not limit. Sir E. Wilmot earnestly
recommended the scheme to the home government, but Lord Stanley
hesitated until the evils of the probation system enforced a change, and
lessened the labor at the disposal of the crown. Had the men been
employed on a work so popular they would have been withdrawn from the
colonial eye, and the interest of their new labors might have
extinguished the prevailing discontent. But while the governor waited
for instructions the men were idle, or employed in useless attempts at
cultivation on barren land, of which the produce rarely defrayed the
cost of the implements destroyed.

The charge for police and gaols had always been borne by the legislative
council with impatience. The estimates were accompanied by an annual
protest against entailing on the colony any pecuniary consequence of
British crime. But when the convict labor was withdrawn from the roads,
and new taxes demanded, the time arrived for the most decided
resistance, and the event proved that the councillors who refused their
consent acted with prudence. The minister himself was compelled to own
at last, that the exaction of twenty shillings per head for police, was
unexampled in civilised governments.

In 1836 Mr. Spring Rice (now Lord Monteagle) took advantage of a
considerable local land fund to throw on the council the police
establishment of the colony, occasioned by transportation. The sum then
required (L14,000) was comparatively unimportant, and it was urged that
the labor of convicts employed on public works at the cost of Great
Britain, except L4,000 for superintend