Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/184

 Confident in the future, he "did not doubt (July 1788) that the country would prove the most valuable acquisition Great Britain ever made; at the same time no country offers less assistance than this does, nor do I think any country could be more disadvantageously placed with respect to support from the mother country on which for a few years we must entirely depend." Fifty farmers would do more in one year than a thousand convicts in producing food.

The free settlers for whom Phillip had sighed did not arrive during his term of office, but as they were sent out in response to his entreaties, their landing may properly be mentioned in the record of his services.

On the 15th Jan. 1793 a ship was sighted, and at night "a large fire for the information of the stranger was lighted at the South Head." She was the Bellona, with stores and provisions, a few female convicts, and five free settlers with their families. It does not seem that general information had induced them to immigrate, for four of the new settlers had, in the Sirius and Lady Juliana, visited Sydney before. On this occasion the English Government paid their passage- money, gave them implements, guaranteed to them two years' provisions, and assigned to them convict labour free of expense, with one year's clothing and two years' rations for each convict so assigned.

Man is gregarious, even when pecuniary profit might prompt him to separate from crowds, and the new settlers clung to the neighbourhood of Sydney and Parramatta instead of selecting their farms at the Hawkesbury. They called their selection "Liberty Plains," only one convict