BY .JAMES BACKHOUSE WALKER. 171 



Founding a colony, according to modem 

 ideas, means to open up the country as speedily as possible, 

 to settle the lands with energetic cultivators who will 

 develop the natural resources of the soil, to attract a 

 population who will thrive themselves and advance the 

 colony by the extension of an export trade. Nothing 

 was further from the thoughts of the home authorities 

 than any plan for colonising in this sense. New Hol- 

 land was to be, not a colony, but a place for the reception 

 of criminals, — a settlement to relieve the home country of 

 the ever growing and overwhelming difficulty of dis- 

 posing of her criminal population. The British Govern- 

 ment not only did not encourage colonisation, they 

 endeavoured as far as possible to prevent it, or at least to 

 confine it within the narrowest limits, permitting it only 

 in so far as it might be made to serve as an auxiliary to 

 their sole object — the maintenance of a penal settlement 

 at the smallest possible cost. The subordinate establish- 

 ments at Port Phillip, the Derwenf, Port Dalrymple, 

 Newcastle, and other places were planted in the first 

 instance as military posts, to prevent France establishing 

 herself in spots where she might be able to harrass the 

 great penal establishment at Port Jackson. The expedi- 

 tions of Bowen, of Collins, and of Paterson were 

 mainly precautionary measures, part of the military 

 policy of England in her great struggle with France. 

 Prisoners were a useful part of these early establish- 

 ments, as providing labour which, by the erecting of 

 buildings and cultivation of the soil, might make these 

 posts as little burdensome as possible to the national exche- 

 quer. These outlying settlements, also, if favourably 

 situated, might in course of time become valuable penal 

 stations. Some of them, such as the Derwent and Port 

 Dalrymple, would further serve the useful purpose of 

 ports* of refuge for the East India Company's vessels in 

 the China trade, and form convenient posts for _ the 

 protection of the whale and seal fisheries from American 

 and other foreign intruders. 



Bowen's choice of Risdon, and Collins' abandonment 

 of Port Phillip when he could not find a suitable 

 locality near the Heads, were not, as is too often sup- 

 posed," the result of incapacity and blindness. They 

 wanted to form a station, not to plant a colony — a station 

 readily accessible from the sea — and the resources of the 

 interior of the country were of little concern to them, so 

 long as they could find in their immediate neighbourhood 

 sufficient pasture for their cattle, and enough agricultural 



