Page:Hints on emigration to the new settlement on the Swan and Canning Rivers, on the west coast of Australia.djvu/11

 9 can return to their mother country and to society with the certainty of possessing purity of character, and without risk of rejection, into every situation to which fortune, talent and character may justify their aspiring.

Without any illiberal sentiment, this is a disadvantage under which Port Jackson and Van Diemen's Land certainly suffer. Nevertheless these thriving Colonies, in the course of 30 or 40 years, have made surprising progress in agriculture, popuation, commerce and wealth. The situation of Port Jackson was the most distant from the Mother Country; its position was not peculiarly adapted to production or traffic with any part of the Globe; therefore, the improvement can only be attributed to a favorable soil, free from the taxations of old European Governments, a low fee cost, or a nominal pepper corn rent, which circumstances have not only been capable of maintaining those who adventured, but of yielding a profit for capital sufficient to induce others to pursue the same course?