towns and districts belonging to Port Jackson.  Out of these there were six hundred and ten soldiers, and six thousand two hundred and ninety-seven convicts, leaving a free population, independent of the military, of nine thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven souls.  At Newcastle, a settlement about sixty miles to the northward of Port Jackson, there were five hundred and fifty souls, about seventy of whom were free.  At the settlements of the Derwent and Port Dalrymple, there were in all three thousand one hundred and fourteen souls, of whom two thousand five hundred and fifty-four were at the former place, and five hundred and sixty at the latter:  out of these there were about two hundred soldiers, but the number of free persons I have not been able precisely to discover.  As these settlements, however, include the majority of the colonists and their families, who were removed from Norfolk Island; and as by far the greater proportion of the convicts who have been transported from this country have been sent to Port Jackson, I have no doubt that the number of free persons there, may be safely estimated at three fourths of their entire population, seeing that it is about two thirds of the population of Port Jackson.  According to this rate of computation, therefore, the number of free persons in these two settlements, after previously deducting the two hundred military, will amount to about two thousand one hundred and eighty-six souls.  It may, consequently, be perceived, that the grand total of the free population of all these various colonies in the latter end of November, 1817, may be safely estimated to have been eleven thousand nine hundred and seventy-three, being an excess of four thousand four hundred and seventy above the number of convicts, or in the proportion of more than three to two.

As the establishment of the legislative assembly in question could not, however, be well effected before the end of the year 1819, it may not be altogether irrelevant to ascertain what will be the probable amount of the free population at that period.  The number of births in the colony cannot at present be computed under two thousand annually, since the increase in these various settlements between the month of November, 1816, and the month of November, 1817, is found to have been three thousand two hundred and eighty-nine souls; and the number of convicts transported thither from the first of January, 1816, to the first of January, 1818, was only three thousand one hundred and eight.  Allowing, therefore, that one half of these, or one thousand five hundred and fifty-four, were transported to the colony during the year 1817, the increase that took place there, from birth and emigration will have been one thousand seven hundred and thirty-five:  to which if we add five hundred, the number of persons that probably quit the colony annually; the actual rate of increase in the free population in the course of the year 1817, may be fixed at two thousand two hundred and thirty-five