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the Scotch mechanics, and the consequent elevation of the standard of morals among that class of the colonial community; the marked improvement in colonial architecture, which is also directly traceable to the same source, and the greatly diminished cost of public buildings in the colony; the establishment of an institution for the education of youth on the comparatively extensive plan of the Australian College, and the stimulus that has thereby been communicated to the colony in a great variety of respects-taking all these particulars into consideration, I am confident that if the Secretary of State for the Colonies will cause the records of the colonial department to be searched, from the period when Great Britain acquired her first acre of land beyond seas to the present hour, he will not find a single other instance in which a similar amount of public money granted for public purposes in the colonies, has been productive of a similar amount of real and palpable good to any colonial community. His Majesty's Government have therefore been no losers by their bargain with the founders of the Australian College, however costly that institution may have proved to the writer. They have at all events got a quid pro quo, as representatives of the community at large. Nay, when I see grant after grant, both of public money and of allotments of land, voted by the Legislative Council of the colony for the Archdeacon's school at Parramatta, I cannot help thinking that, in being denied this inoderate request after all their exertions, the trustees of the Scots Church, the founders of the Australian College, have been breathed upon with the cold breath of a

stepmother by the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

It has occurred to me that there may perhaps be gentlemen in London, or elsewhere in the mother country, who might possibly be induced from the preceding details to patronize and to encourage an institution which promises to be so permanently and so beneficially influential to the southern hemisphere as the Australian College, by pecuniary donations or by donations of books on literature, philosophy, science, or theology. Should this be the case, I beg to add that donations of either kind will be received by Alexander Birnie, Esq. 12, Great St. Helen's, London—a gentleman to whom, on behalf of the Australian College, I am already under the highest obligations. The Rev. Robert Wylde, A. M. of the University of Glasgow, and Mr. David M'Kenzie, A. M. of the University of Edinburgh, have been engaged to conduct the classical and the English departments of the institution, and will in all likelihood have embarked for the colony before these pages shall have come under the eye of the reader. But the grand desideratum still is to have an efficient provision secured in the institution for the training up of missionaries to the South Sea Islands, and of ministers of religion for the Australian colonies; and this can only be effected by generous hearts and open hands. Of these, however, there is happily no scarcity in Great Britain—the land of genuine and enlightened philanthropy.

London, April, 1834.

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CHAPTER VII.

EMIGRATION; CONSIDERED CHIEFLY IN REFERENCE TO THE PRACTICABILITY AND EXPEDIENCY OF IMPORTING AND OF SETTLING THROUGHOUT THE TERRITORY OF NEW SOUTH WALES, A NUMEROUS, INDUSTRIOUS, AND VIRTUOUS AGRICULTURAL POPULATION; BEING A LECTURE, DELIVERED IN THE TEMPORARY HALL OF THE AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE, SYDNEY, 9TH MAY, 1833.*

"The wealth and strength of a country are its population, and the best part of that population are the cultivators of the soil."

PRESIDENT JACKSON'S MESSAGE FOR DEC. 1832.

If any apology be deemed necessary from the minister of religion who steps forward to address a promiscuous

* The following lecture was delivered under the idea that during the short period of my stay in England I might possibly be instrumental in directing the attention of influential persons in the mother country to the plan of which I had merely given a general outline in my letter to Lord Goderich, of date 30th Dec. 1830. The audience on the occasion was both numerous and respectable, and the lecture was subsequently published to ascertain the sentiments of gentlemen of influence and intelligence throughout the territory in regard to the principles it developed and the plans it proposed. It will probably not be uninteresting to the reader to ascertain the opinion of some respectable member of the Australian community on a subject of such vital importance to the welfare of the colony; I shall therefore take the liberty to subjoin a very interesting letter I received, in acknowledgment of a copy of the Lecture, from Major Mitchell, Surveyor-General of New South Wales.

assembly, on any subject unconnected with Christian doctrine or Christian practice, I am sure no apology will be deemed necessary for introducing the subject of this. evening's lecture to the consideration of so intelligent a portion of the Australian community as I have now the honour to address. It is unquestionably the interest of every inhabitant of New South Wales to do all that in him lies to promote the settlement of a virtuous and industrious agricultural population throughout this territory.

If there are any, however, who deem it incongruous for a minister of religion to occupy my present positionand I doubt not but such may be the opinion of men whose hearts are as diminutive as their understandings -I would remind them, that the Divine Author of the Christian religion, he who went about doing good, administered not unfrequently to the bodily as well as to the spiritual wants of his fellow-countrymen. He healed their diseases when they applied to him for that purpose, and he oftener than once took upon him the task of supplying thousands with the necessaries of life when faint with hunger in the wilderness. It cannot therefore be unbefitting the office of a minister of religion to point out what he has reason to believe the means of enabling thousands of his fellow-countrymen, who should otherwise be left to pine in indigence and hunger in the over-populous cities and villages of Great Britain and Ireland, to eat bread in abundance in the great wilderness of Australia.

But a minister of religion occupying the position I have now the honour to hold, may stand on higher

ground. Divine Providence and the Parliament of Great Britain have, doubtless for the most benevolent purposes, subjected this fair portion of the earth's surface to a species of degradation such as no other portion of the earth's surface has ever experienced. Our father-land, we all know, contains much that the friend of humanity cannot fail to "love," and more that he cannot fail to "admire," in conjunction, however, with all that he "abhors." Now, it is chieflyand I add most unhappily for the colony, whatever it may have been for the individuals themselves-it is chiefly that portion of her population which excites the last of these feelings that Great Britain has hitherto consigned to our shores. Whatever she contained within the ample receptacles of her sin and of her shame-her jails and bridewells and houses of correction-she has ever and anon been vomiting forth on this territory for the last forty years; insomuch, that she has rendered a land which yields to none other on the whole face of the globe for the salubrity of its climate and the serenity of its sky, a land of justly requited vice and of self-inflicted misery. Now, to devise ways and means for transforming this moral wilderness into a well-cultivated field, in which all the virtues that adorn our beloved father-land may come to early and healthful maturity, were in my opinion employment worthy of an angel from heaven, much more of a minister of religion. And whatever other specifics may be devised for promoting this high and holy object, I confess that, exclusive of the regular and efficient dispensation of the ordinances of religion,

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