Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/118

 stage. These reasons alone are sufficient in the writer’s opinion to prove that the capital, and the energies which the friends of the South Australian project may be able to call forth, will, under any circumstances, benefit the settlement of Western Australia. But, if to these causes, which nothing can keep from operating in a greater or less degree in the direction described, a third be superadded—if the ordinary precautions for the security of the settlers are to be dispensed with, and they are to be constantly liable to be called off from their proper pursuits, to defend themselves and the infant settlement—it requires no gift of prophecy to predict, that the result will be, a rapid and general migration, as opportunity and means may offer, to other colonies; and that as Western Australia is near at hand, and in the full enjoyment of free institutions, it cannot but largely participate in the benefits that must result from the failure of so improvident an attempt as that in which Colonel Napier has declined risking his reputation.

The daily employment of settlers in a new colony demands and engrosses their attention to a degree that people at home, who have always been used to a long-established and completely organized state of society, are but little prepared to conceive. The occupations of such persons being pastoral as well as agricultural, lead to their distribution over a considerable extent of country. A colony also like the one proposed, though happily not intended as a penal settlement, will have its ports open to all who have the means and inclination to find their way thither; and granting that it could commence with a greater proportion of settlers of character and intelligence than ever yet found their way to the shores of a colony—still the stream of emigration will bear along with it many who have not the qualities that render them desirable to a new settlement, and who soon evince they need the restraint of a strong and efficient executive.