little, if indeed at all alleviated; and some other expedient became everyday more and more necessary to be adopted by those who remained.  In this exigency many abandoned their farms altogether, and hired themselves as servants to such richer individuals as had occasion for their services; while others, and undoubtedly the greater part of them, cultivated but a small portion of their land, and afterwards travelled in search of labour till harvest time, at which period they returned, reaped, threshed, and disposed of their crops, and after recultivating the same spot, sought, during the rest of the year, employment as before, wherever it could be found.  This is the mode of life which a great number of the poor settlers pursue to this day.

But the effect of these entire, or partial secessions from the agricultural body, was not so extensively beneficial as might at first be imagined.  All this time the population was in a state of rapid progression, both from the daily influx of people from without, and from the amazing fecundity of the colonists within.  The distress, therefore, of the colony continued increasing in proportion to its increasing population.  And although it may appear strange, that while it was a subject of such notoriety, that the settlers were already too numerous for the occasions of the colony, fresh volunteers should crowd to enrol themselves under their banners; this surprise will cease when it is stated, that the settling of new lands was for many years a matter of traffic between the government and the colonists, by which, as it is natural to conclude, the former were no great gainers.  It was their policy, and undoubtedly necessary in the early stages of the settlement, and even at present under proper restrictions, to encourage the extension of agriculture generally, but more particularly in the inland districts, that are not subject to flood; and to this end it was customary to support new settlers with their wives, families, and servants, for eighteen months, at the expense of the crown.  The natural consequence was, that all who had become free, either by the expiration of their servitude, by conditional emancipation, or by absolute pardon, and who had no means of support, embraced this offer of the government, which assured them a subsistence that enabled them to seek at their leisure for a more lucrative occupation elsewhere.  Nor are these poor creatures who thus profited by the liberality of the government with an intention to abuse it, to be too harshly condemned:  still less so are those who, arriving strangers in the colony, and having in most instances wives and families, the support of whom in inactivity would be daily consuming their little all, embraced this the only immediate mode of subsistence that occurred to them.  These people, as soon as the helping hand of the government was withdrawn, and it became incumbent on them to depend on their own proper resources, would be immediately subject to the same privation and misery which pressed