to so enormous an amount, solely from ignorance and mismanagement, will at length excite inquiry, and give rise to a system that will unfetter the colonists, and by gradually enabling them to support themselves, no longer render them an unproductive and increasing burden to this country.  It is useless, and indeed absurd, for the government to be sending out incessant injunctions for economy, and to be eternally insisting upon the necessity of effecting retrenchments, which their own impolitic restrictions render impossible.  The addition which is annually made to the population of the colony must occasion a corresponding expenditure on the part of the colonial government.  The convicts, who are transported thither, were maintained at a great expence while in this country, and cannot be supported without cost there.  So long as the avenues to industry and enterprize are closed, it is ridiculous to imagine that the colonists can undertake the maintenance of a body of men, for whose labour they can find no profitable occupation.  The expence, therefore, of supporting the great mass of convicts who are constantly arriving in this colony, must necessarily increase in spite of all the exhortations of the government, and all the efforts of the governor, whoever he may be, to carry them into effect.  The present governor, indeed, has contrived in some measure to comply with these recommendations of retrenchment with which he has been harrassed; but his obedience has been attended with the adoption of a most pernicious and indefensible system, that of granting too promiscuously tickets of leave to convicts, before sufficient time had elapsed for ascertaining the reality of their reformation, and their title to so important an indulgence.  This privilege, which exempts them from the public works, and enables them to seek employment in every direction throughout the colony, it may be perceived, turns loose a set of men, who had been solemnly pronounced to be improper and dangerous members of society; and affords them an unrestrained opportunity of preying upon the industrious and deserving, and of committing fresh enormities, before they have made the atonement affixed to their original offences, and required not more to uphold the distinction which ought always to be drawn between virtue and vice, than from a due regard to their future welfare and regeneration.  It is principally to the introduction of the ticket of leave system that the considerable reductions which have been effected of late years in the expences of the colony are to be ascribed.  How far this most pernicious and immoral system has been carried, may be seen by reference to the colonial expenditure for the four years anterior to 1816.  In 1812 it amounted to L176,781; in 1813 to L235,597; in 1814 to L231,362; and in 1815 it had fallen to L150,087.  In the two following years, indeed, it has been seen that there has been a considerable increase of expenditure; but still such has been the extension of the ticket