Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/117

 The writer trusts that the remarks into which he may be drawn by having had his attention turned to the work just quoted for the purpose of correcting the errors lately adverted to, will be taken in good part. Attached, as he is ready to acknowledge himself, to the colony of Western Australia, he is conscious of no feelings of hostility to the sister settlement, which it is indeed his cordial wish to serve, rather than to injure, by warning its Directors of those rocks and quicksands upon which he fears they may be running their vessel.—If they persist in their endeavour to found and establish their intended settlement without the aid of a military force, not only to protect the settlers from the aborigines, but to assist in keeping order among the colonists themselves, and to ensure obedience to the laws, they will, he feels assured, be only eventually serving the settlement of Western Australia. His experience and observation of what settlers ordinarily can accomplish in an infant colony, and his conviction that few in any hundred of them possess all the requisites necessary for very speedily mastering the difficulties they have to encounter, induce him to caution the projectors against the line of policy which they propose to adopt, in attempting to dispense with public money, and especially with troops.

As to any jealousy of the sister colony influencing the mind of the writer, he utterly disclaims it. It may be as well, in confirmation of this, to state, that in his opinion, the situation, the geographical position alone, of Western Australia, gives it a great and permanent advantage. That in addition to this, it is no trifling point in favour of the latter, that it has the start of the new settlement, and that many who leave Great Britain to go to South Australia, impatient of the total absence of the comforts they leave behind them, will be likely to transfer themselves and their capital to the colony which has passed through the initiatory