and firm becomes their entanglement. Lamentable
as undoubtedly must be such a hopeless state of servitude,
it still appears to them preferable to the precincts
of a prison. They respire the free invigorating
air of their plains, and can still traverse them at
their option, or at least when the season arrives
which closes their daily task. But this privilege,
it must be confessed, is purchased at its uttermost
value. We have philanthropists among us, who justly
commiserate the condition of that unoffending race
of people, who dragged from the scenes of their nativity,
and the habitations of their fathers, have been consigned
by a gang of merciless kidnappers to perpetual slavery
themselves, and to the still more intolerable necessity
of bequeathing an existence of similar endurement
and degradation to their offspring. After years
of strenuous indefatigable exertion these friends
of humanity, these noble champions of liberty have
succeeded, if not in emancipating those, who had already
been consigned to this unmerited doom, at least in
preventing the further extension of this infernal
traffic. Would it not be an effort worthy the
same philanthropy, which has thus secured the protection
and deliverance of unoffending Africa, to procure
the emancipation of suffering Australasia? to raise
her from the abject state of poverty, slavery, and
degradation, to which she is so fast sinking, and to
present her a constitution, which may gradually conduct
her to freedom, prosperity, and happiness?
It must be admitted that this state of slavery, so
galling to the subjects of a free country, has been
in some measure imposed on the colonists by their
own imprudent extravagance. Already but too much
inclined by their early habits of irregularity to
licentious indulgence, the prosperous state of their
affairs during the first fifteen years after the foundation
of the settlement, presented the strongest inducements
to a revival of their ancient propensities, which
had been repressed, but not subdued. Imagining
that the same unlimited market, which was then offered
for their produce, would always continue, they only
thought of consuming the fruits of their industry;
not doubting that the same fields, which thus lavishly
administered to the gratification of their desires,
would amply suffice for the more moderate enjoyments
of their offspring. But when once their produce
began to exceed the demand of the government, and when
in a short time afterwards from the want of due encouragement,
all the various avenues of industry that lay open
were successively filled, and the means of occupation
eithergreatly circumscribed, or entirely exhausted,
these people, so long habituated to unrestrained indulgence,
found it difficult to support that privation, which
became incumbent on their condition; and in order
to procure those luxuries of which they so severely
felt the want, exhausted their credit, and ended by
alienating their possessions. There can be but