one, and one requiring less skill, capital, and assiduity, lies open to him.  Agriculture, therefore, as soon as it shall be freed from its present restraints, will afford the readiest and most accessible channel for carrying off the large accumulation of stagnant labour which at present infests this colony.  It is this mass of superfluous labourers, for whom there exists only a fictitious demand, and with whom the government are at present obliged to give a bounty in the shape of clothing and provisions, to induce the settlers to accept their services, that constitutes the main source of the great and increasing expenditure of this colony; and it is to this point alone that all radical and comprehensive schemes of retrenchment must be directed.  The impoverished condition of the colonists, to which circumstance alone the expences of the government are mainly attributable, arises from the means of employment not keeping pace with the rapid increase in the population, and yet perhaps there is no community in which equal encouragements to industry are to be found.  It has already been stated that within the last six years the population of this colony has actually doubled itself, in other words, it has advanced in this respect with a celerity nearly four times as great as the United States of America,—­a country whose rapid numerical increase has been a subject of astonishment to the whole world.  It may therefore be perceived that this unparalleled augmentation in the population of this colony, must of itself afford an unprecedented stimulus to agriculture;—­a stimulus, perhaps, with which the agricultural progress of any other country could not keep pace.  It is well known that Poland, which is the greatest corn country in Europe, and whose whole strength is directed to the pursuits of agriculture, does not export more than one month’s consumption of grain for its population.  America exports somewhat less, but would be able, without doubt, to export somewhat more, if the collected force of its inhabitants were applied to the raising of corn; yet still neither the one nor the other of these countries would be enabled to support such a rapid increase of population as is taking place in this colony.  Such, however, is its fertility that the vast encouragement afforded by this unprecedented augmentation in its numbers (who, it must be recollected, are for the most part adults, and not, as in the case of old established societies, infants, and in consequence not gifted with the full powers of consumption,) so prodigious, I say, is its fertility, that there is far from a sufficient demand for labour.  The settlements in Van Diemen’s Land alone, on the occasion of the flood which took place in the month of March, 1817, at the Hawkesbury river, the principal agricultural establishment, and where, for the causes I have already explained, the colonists, in most instances, allow their stacks to remain within the influence of these destructive inundations, were able to supply