Port Jackson with about twenty thousand bushels of wheat, the whole of which was raised without any probability of a market, and would have perished in the hands of the growers, or at best, have become the food of hogs, had it not been for the great loss of grain occasioned by the overflowing of the above river.  It may, therefore, be perceived, that the colonists in Van Diemen’s Land raise on the strength of the bare possibility of a flood happening at the principal settlement, very nearly as much corn as is required for their own consumption; and there can be no doubt if their industry was stretched to the utmost point of extension, that they would be enabled to export at least three times as much as they thus casually furnished in the year 1817.  The settlements, however, at Port Jackson, cannot pretend to equal fertility of soil, yet even their productive powers are considerably cramped by the want of an adequate market.  How this most important object might be effected, and profitable occupation created for all the labour that is now, or may be hereafter disposable in the colony, I have already explained at considerable length; and it is under the presumption that my recommendations on this head will be deemed worthy of adoption, that I shall hereafter submit a plan for gradually diminishing the colonial expenditure.

The readiest way of accomplishing this object would be to abolish at once the system of victualling and clothing the convicts from the king’s stores; but this is impracticable and must be done judiciously, and in proportion only to the gradually increasing demand for labour.  This mode of retrenchment, indeed, has already been pushed further than circumstances have warranted.  The ticket of leave system, by which convicts are permitted to go on their own hands, and administer in any way that they can to their own wants, though first intended as a reward to the really reformed and meritorious convict, has of late years been resorted to as the most efficacious means of lessening the expences of the government.  And hence the very end and aim of this colony, the reformation of the lawless gang who are transported to its shores, have been postponed to a paltry saving, unworthy the character of the nation, and subversive in a great measure of the philanthropic intentions with which the legislature were originally actuated.  The alarming increase of crime that has taken place within the last few years, is the re-action of this pernicious and mercenary system, which has already been carried to such an extent as to endanger the lives and property of every honest and well disposed inhabitant of the colony.  This system, so injurious of itself, has been powerfully seconded by the lax and indiscriminate manner in which convict servants have been assigned to the various settlers.  Being in most instances freed or emancipated convicts themselves, many of them possess but little character, and in fact only accept the different indulgences that are held out