This Despatch will be delivered to your Lordship by Lieutenant Richard Lundin of the 73rd Regiment, to whom I take the liberty of referring Your Lordship for any particulars relative to the Colony that may have escaped my recollection in my Public Despatches; and I further beg leave to recommend him to your Lordship’s Favour and Protection.

I have, etc.,

L. MACQUARIE.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

+Source.+—­The State and Position of Western Australia, by Captain Frederick Chidley Irwin of H.M. 63rd Regiment; late Commandant of the Troops, and Acting Governor of the Colony, 1835, pp. 32-37, 42-46.

The settlement of Western Australia was undertaken in 1825, with the purely philanthropic idea of relieving the overcrowded population of Great Britain.  The early difficulties were due to the ignorance of conditions in the country, and the unsuitability of the emigrants.  Mr. Peel was chief promoter of the scheme.

The reader’s attention will now be drawn to some of the mis-statements with respect to the colony, which have appeared in recent publications.  Under this head he would especially notice a work entitled “England and America.”  At page 33, Vol. 2 of the work in question, there is said to be, in Western Australia “abundance of good land and of land, too, cleared and drained by nature.”  After adverting to the amount of capital and live stock, and the number of labourers introduced by the first settlers, it is asked, what has become of all that capital, and all those labourers?  Then comes the following passage:  “Why this failure with all the elements of success—­plenty of good land, plenty of capital, and enough labour?  The explanation is easy:  In this colony there never has been a class of labourers.  Those who went out as labourers no sooner reached the colony than they were tempted by the superabundance of good land to become landowners.”

The writer proceeds to state, that Mr. Peel (who, as he had been informed, had brought out a capital of L50,000 and 300 persons of the labouring class) had been thus left without a servant to make his bed, or to fetch him water from the river; and that, in the absence of his people, his capital had perished.  “The same thing,” he adds, “happened in many cases.”  Further on, it is stated that some of the labourers, who had become independent landowners, died of hunger, at a period when a large supply of food had reached the colony, and that they were starved because where they had settled was not known to the Governor, nor even to themselves—­“such,” says this writer, “was the dispersion of these colonists, in consequence of superabundance of good land.”  It is added, that the settlers who remained had petitioned for convicts, though one of the chief inducements to settling in the colony was an undertaking, on the part of the English Government, that none should be sent thither.