The object of the foregoing propositions must be too evident from the preliminary remarks which I have made, to need any extended illustration; nevertheless, it may not be altogether inexpedient to say a few words in further explanation of them to such persons as have bestowed no portion of their attention on the circumstances and situation of this colony.  The first, second, and third articles speak for themselves.  The remedy here proposed for the alarming evils, which I have so copiously traced to the causes of their origin and continuance, will certainly occasion the government for the next five years a very great additional expence; but after the most mature reflection on the present impoverished state of this colony, and the deeply rooted habits of idleness and vice, which a fifteen years’ deprivation of the most important civil and political rights has occasioned, I can devise none besides that could be applied with any probability of effecting a radical and permanent cure.  The arrangement recommended in the third article, I mean the substitution of a premium for the present mode of clothing and victualling the convicts, would be highly favourable to the agricultural interests, both by limiting to the cultivators of the soil, the supply of the food consumed by their servants, and by sparing them the trouble and expence of sending their carts for it to the king’s stores, an exemption which would be attended with a considerable saving to such of them as inhabit districts remote from the towns:  it would also be a source of economy to the government, by enabling them to make a great reduction in the commissariat department.  The only objection I can anticipate to this article, is, that it fixes an arbitrary rate of reduction on the premium to be allowed the settlers with the convicts; and that this rate may prove greater than the advance which the colony may make in the various avenues of internal industry.  This may possibly be the case, although I consider the period I have named sufficiently protracted to allow the colonists due time to ascertain the nature and extent of their newly acquired privileges, and to profit by them.  If, however, it were practicable, it would certainly be more eligible that they themselves should become the arbiters of the abatement which should annually take place in the premium to be given with the convicts.  I do not, however, well know how this desideratum could be effected, unless the grand juries during the circuit of the courts in the different districts, could be empowered to inquire into and determine the increase that may take place in the demand for labour, and regulate the price of it, or in other words the premium to be given with it accordingly.  To detract as far as possible from the increased expence which would follow the adoption of the measures recommended in the first, second, and third articles, is the object of the fourth.  By making the abatement here proposed in the amount of the wages now directed to be paid by the settlers