of leave system that notwithstanding four thousand six hundred and fifty-nine convicts were transported between January, 1812, and January, 1817, the expences of the colony for this latter year were L6445 less than for the year 1813; those of 1817 only amounting to L229,152, while those of the year 1813 were L235,597.  This violent and unjustifiable mode of retrenchment, however, has not been put into such extensive practice with impunity:  it has been attended with its natural and inevitable results, a proportionate increase of demoralization and crime.  The proof of this assertion I shall rest on the following government order:—­

“Sydney, 30th August, 1817.  In consequence of the frequent robberies which have been of late committed between Sydney and Paramatta; his Excellency the Governor deems it expedient earnestly to recommend to persons in general to travel only during the day time, and particularly to those who have the charge of loaded carts, to set out from Sydney and Paramatta respectively so early after sun-rise as to be enabled to reach the place of their destination before sun-set.  And with a view to afford all possible protection to travellers, his Excellency directs the principal superintendant of police at Sydney from and after Wednesday the 3d of September next, to order two constables from thence to patrole the road every night between Sydney and Powell’s Half-way House; and in like manner the principal magistrate at Paramatta to order two constables from that place to patrole the road every night between Paramatta and Powell’s Half-way House.  The duty of such constables to commence at sun-set and cease at sun-rise, until further orders.  “The magistrates are particularly enjoined not to grant passes to convicts either having tickets of leave or otherwise, excepting on actual duty, or in cases of real emergency where the object is satisfactorily explained to the magistrate.”

This injunction to the magistrates not to grant the ticket of leave-men passes except under particular circumstances would afford the public very little additional security against their depredations; since their total exemption from public or individual employment, places them out of all restraint except such as may arise from the surveillance of the police, which even in Sydney is badly organized, because not sufficiently numerous, and to which in the interior towns and districts it would be a farce to apply the name of “Police” at all.

I am aware that the governor has been induced to this measure in compliance with positive instructions, rather than in conformity with his own judgment.  But a system in such direct violation of every principle of justice, morality, and expediency, can never be long tolerated.  Its continuance, in fact, would soon annihilate all industry, and convert the colony into a den of thieves and murderers, unfit for the abode of virtue and honesty, and dangerous to the government itself which had authorized it.—­It