NEW SOUTH WALES AND PARLIAMENT. 297 



Edinburgh Review! It was a very characteristic piece of writing, 

 and altogether condemnatory of the settlement and all thereto 

 belonging. 



"With fanciful schemes of universal good," he wrote, "we 

 have no business to meddle. Why we are to erect penitentiary 

 houses and prisons at the distance of half the diameter of the 

 globe, and to incur the enormous expense of feeding and trans- 

 porting their inhabitants too, and at such a distance, it is ex- 

 tremely difficult to discover. It is certainly not from any 

 deficiency of barren islands near our own coasts, nor of uncul- 

 tivated wastes in the interior ; and if we were sufficiently 

 fortunate to be wanting in such species of accommodation, we 

 -might discover in Canada, or the West Indies, or on the Coast 

 of Africa, a climate malignant enough, or a soil sufficiently 

 sterile to revenge all the injuries which have been inflicted on 

 society by pick-pockets, larcenists and petty felons. . . ." 



" It is foolishly believed that the Colony of Botany Bay unites 

 our moral and commercial interests, and that we shall receive 

 hereafter an ample equivalent, in bales of goods, for all the vices 

 we export." 



The writer was, however, thoroughly hopeless, "It is a 

 Colony besides begun under every possible disadvantage ; it is 

 too distant to be long governed, or well defended ; it is under- 

 taken, not by the voluntary association of individuals, but by 

 Government, and by means of compulsory labour. ... It may 

 be a curious consideration to reflect what we are to do with this 

 Colony when it comes to years of discretion. Are we to spend 

 another hundred millions of money in discovering its strength, 

 and to humble ourselves again before a fresh set of Washingtons 

 and Franklins ? . . . Endless blood and treasure will be ex- 

 hausted to support a tax on kangaroo skins ; faithful Commons 

 will go on voting fresh supplies to support aykrf and necessary 

 war ; and Newgate, then become a quarter of the world, will 

 evince a heroism not unworthy of the great characters by whom 

 she was originally peopled." 



From this time until 1810 the Colony sunk again into 



i See vol. ii., and April, 1803, pp. 30, 42- The Edinburgh * 

 notice of colonial subjects than any other periodical of the time, probably because 

 *he Whigs had a very definite (though negative) colonial policy. 



