from a precarious and dangerous dependence on other countries.  Until, therefore, the free inhabitants of the colony had increased to a sufficient number to exercise the elective franchise, and until its productive powers had outstripped its consumptive, and it became necessary either to create new markets for its produce within, or to direct a portion of its strength to the raising of articles for exportation to other countries, the establishment of a free representative government would not have been expedient had it even been practicable.

The period at which the produce of this settlement fairly exceeded the internal demand for it, may, as I have already noticed, be dated so far back as the year 1804, being about sixteen years after the period of its foundation.  It has been already seen that the harvests of that and the succeeding year were so abundant, that no sale could be obtained for more than one half of the crop;—­that had it not been for a tremendous flood which happened in 1806, the majority of the cultivators must have abandoned their farms, and sought for other occupation;—­and that since that period there has fortunately been a succession of floods and droughts, which with the exception of two or three seasons of equal plenty, have kept the productive powers of the colony nearly on a level with its consumptive, or else the situation of the settlers, deplorable as it now is, would have been infinitely more so.  How radically defective, then, must be the government of this colony, when what would be calamities of the most serious and afflicting nature in a well organized community are here blessings!  Is it in the nature of things to adduce more weighty arguments in proof of the necessity which has existed since the above period for its supercession?  Ought not a government that would have felt the importance, and have possessed the power of creating new channels of consumption for agricultural produce to have been then instituted?  This great object, it has been already shewn, could have been in no way so easily accomplished as by the erection of distilleries.  To have diverted the attention of any part of the agriculturists from the growth of corn, would have been highly impolitic in a country, where the greatest and most fertile portion of the arable land is subject to such awful inundations.  On the contrary, it was and still is expedient, that the whole agricultural energies of the colony should be confined to the production of grain, until the surplus become so great as to leave no chance whatever of these inundations being any longer attended with their former baneful consequences.  But this can only be effected by creating a sure and adequate market for this surplus; and whether such market is to be found in the colony, or to be sought for abroad, no power either would have been, or is so fully competent to accomplish this important purpose, as an independent legislature chosen from the midst of the community, whose interests are identified with its own.