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, who would introduce the various arts and industry of their respective countries.

In the formation of such a settlement, several thousand convicts could be employed advantageously for a series of years—in the erection of public buildings, whether of immediate necessity or of permanent utility; in the clearing of land for gardens and for agricultural purposes suited to the soil and climate; in the formation of roads, tanks, piers, bridges, &:c. The supplying of a settlement of this kind with the necessaries of life, by means of convict labour employed in the cultivation of land within the settlement itself, should not, I conceive, be attempted. These, with the exception of vegetables and the more common species of tropical fruits, which could be easily raised on the spot, would be procurable in the first instance at a much cheaper rate from New South Wales. Free emigrant British subjects, who might eventually settle in such a colony, would do so as merchants and capitalists, and not as cultivators of the soil on their own account, or by their own labour. A class of cultivators, with the advantage of a previous knowledge of all the processes of inter-tropical agriculture and a perfect adaptation to the climate, could be easily procured in the vicinity of Port Essington, (as is testified by