on their body, and would consequently be under the necessity of resorting to the same expedients for relief.  The great increase which has taken place of late years to the cleared lands in the colony, has been the result of this system, and not the gradual progressive operation of a flourishing agriculture.  This assertion I consider fully borne out by a comparison between the quantity of land cleared, and the quantity in cultivation.  By the last return from the colony, taken so late as November, 1817, it appears that there are 47,564 acres of cleared land, out of which only 32,814 are cropped; 14,750 acres, therefore, (or nearly one-half of what is in cultivation) are lying waste:  a circumstance which can only be accounted for in this manner, since the system of fallowing land is not in practice.  It must therefore be evident, that the clearing of so great a portion of land over and above what is required by the situation and wants of the colonists, must have been effected by unnatural means.  The increase of produce has not, indeed, outstepped the growth of population, but it has kept pace with it, and all the cleared land which is not employed in the raising of this produce, has evidently been a useless expenditure of labour.

Thus this copious afflux of new colonists into the uninhabited districts in the interior, which had hitherto been exclusively occupied by the flocks and herds of the graziers, did not produce that permanent advantage which the enormous expense incurred by the government in their outfit, ought to have insured.  At the same time it was of the most undoubted injury to the stock-holders, by preventing them from allowing their cattle to roam at large during the night, from the danger of trespass and poundage, which the indiscriminate dispersion of small agricultural establishments over the whole face of the country, without fences of any description to protect them, every where occasioned.  To be sure, the colonists will have derived this very material advantage from the great quantity of cleared land, now lying waste; that whenever the pernicious policy, which has paralysed their energies, and blasted the general prosperity, shall be relinquished, and a judicious system of encouragement substituted in its stead, they will instantly be prepared to profit by the capabilities which the wisdom and justice of the parent government shall have at length afforded them.

But the future increase in the cleared lands will not be proportioned to the past, because directions have of late been transmitted from this country, to allow future colonists only six months provisions from the king’s stores, for themselves and their households, instead of eighteen months, as heretofore.  This very material diminution in the measure of encouragement held out to future colonization, will clearly be attended with a threefold operation.  It will be a grievous disadvantage to such respectable persons as emigrate from this country, with a real intention, but with