voluntarily become an inhabitant of a country where he has no rights, no possessions, that are sacred and inviolable?  And where to this insecurity of person and property are superadded the greatest impediments to the extension of industry?  A country of this kind, it may be easily imagined, possesses no allurements for those who have ever breathed a freer atmosphere; and it is not to be wondered at, that hundreds of convicts on the expiration of their several terms of transportation should be continually leaving a country, where the freeman and the slave are alike subjected to the uncontrolled authority of an individual; where the trial by jury is unknown, and an odious military tribunal substituted in its stead; and where there is no representative body to protect them in the enjoyment of their rights, and to secure them either from the imposition of arbitrary and destructive taxes, or from the influence of unjust and impolitic laws.

How far these two great checks to population which I have just mentioned, have operated, may be best ascertained from the last census taken in the colony in the month of November 1817.  At that time it appears that the population of all the settlements, whether in New Holland or Van Diemen’s Land, amounted only to twenty thousand three hundred and seventy-nine souls.  It is not in my power to obtain returns of all the convicts who have been landed at various times in this colony; but as it is now about thirty years since the period of its foundation, very little doubt can be entertained that the total of them must have nearly equalled the amount of the actual population.* The number transported thither for some years past cannot be estimated at less than two thousand annually; yet notwithstanding this vast yearly numerical accession, notwithstanding the unparalleled salubrity of the climate, and the consequent small proportion which the number of deaths bears to the number of births, the population of the colony has been found to advance at a comparatively slow pace.  It cannot be supposed that it could ever have been in the intention of the government, that those persons whom the sentence of the law had exiled to these remote shores, should thus be incessantly returning to those scenes, which had witnessed their former irregularities and condemnation.  However sincere their reformation, it must be evident that with a blemished character, the difficulty of obtaining employment and procuring an honest livelihood, would be almost insuperable.  It has been accordingly found that these unfortunate persons have generally renewed their ancient habits, and ended their career either by falling sacrifices on the scaffold to the often violated laws of their country, or by imposing on the government a necessity for the second, and in many instances for the third time of re-transporting them to this colony, where, if sufficient encouragement and protection had been afforded them in the first instance, they would have gladly remained, and have continued good and useful members of society.