Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/49

 With reference to the assertion that some individuals had perished with hunger from not having been able to inform the Governor as to where they had settled, the author can only say, that he did not hear of any such circumstance while in the colony, and that he considers it very improbable; as, with the exception of the people connected with Mr. Peel, the settlers, at the period alluded to, were located on the Swan and the Canning, by following down which rivers they could have reached, in the course of a single day, the towns of Perth or Fremantle.

He has also to confess his ignorance of the colonists having, as stated, petitioned for convicts—he knows that such a wish was not expressed in their memorial drawn up in 1832, and laid before his Majesty’s Government by Sir James Stirling in person. The colonists having had before their eyes, in the neighbouring penal settlements, the serious evils inflicted on society by the employment of convicts (especially as in-door servants), have firmly resisted the temptation to seek such a remedy for their wants. The extreme difficulty, which it is notorious respectable families there experience, to sufficiently guard the morals of their offspring, and to secure their being brought up in the necessary principles of virtue and integrity, is alone a consideration which, it is believed, will keep the colonists in Western Australia stedfast on this point. No mere worldly prosperity whatsoever, can compensate for the tremendous risk to which children in a penal settlement are exposed, as many a heart-broken parent can testify.

It is stated, at page 145, vol. 2, of the work already quoted, that 500,000 acres in the colony had been granted to Mr. Peel—that he had been permitted to mark out his grant on the map, in England—and that, having selected it about the port or landing-place, he subsequently took possession of it, to the great injury of other settlers.