every case perhaps but the present such a supposition would be, it is verified in the instance of this colony; since the system pursued there, is not only destructive of the vital interests of the inhabitants at large, but at the same time, burdensome to this country, and contraventory of the very intentions with which this settlement was established.  This assertion I shall shortly prove, and then leave it to more sagacious politicians than myself, to demonstrate the consistency of what appears to me the most absurd and incongruous paradox that is to be met with in the history of governments.  And first that the present system is burdensome to this country, and what is worse, must become every year still more so, is evident from the gradually progressive augmentation which has taken place in the expenditure of this colony.  From 1788 to 1797, the total expence was L1,037,230, or L86,435 per annum; from 1798 to 1811, it amounted to L1,634,926, or L116,709 per annum; and from 1812 to 1815, both inclusive, to L793,827, or L198,456 per annum.  In 1816, the expence was L193,775 10s. 83/4d. and in 1817 it was L229,152 6s. 31/4d. being nearly treble the annual amount in the year 1797.  This estimate, indeed, includes the cost of transportation; and the rapid increase that has taken place of late years in the sum total, has been in a considerable degree occasioned by the great increase in the number of criminals sent out to the colony; but still that there has been a regularly progressive augmentation to the internal expenditure is quite incontrovertible.

It requires no great portion of discernment to foretel that while the present prohibitory system remains in force; while the colony is alike prevented from profiting by its natural productions, and from calling into life the artificial ones of which it is capable, that it must continue an increasing burthen and expence to the power on which it is dependent for support, and which thus unwisely restrains its exertions.  If the consideration of the benefits which this country might eventually derive from encouraging the growth and exportation of such products as this colony might furnish; if the prospect of finding at no very remote period in a part of our own dominions, various raw materials essential to the fabrication of some of our staple manufactures, and for which we are at present wholly dependent on foreigners; if, in fine, the certainty of extending, instead of destroying, a market for the consumption of those manufactures themselves, be not motives of sufficient weight and cogency to draw the attention of his majesty’s ministers to the impolitic and destructive order of things, which prevents the accomplishment of these desirable ends; it is at least to be hoped in these times of universal embarrassment, when the cry of distress is resounding from one end of the kingdom to the other, that the desire of effecting a retrenchment in this part of the public expenditure, which has swelled