Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/228

 chest for the land so purchased, the carriage of the wool and other colonial produce, of which it has been the price, from New South Wales to London, has afforded profitable employment for six months to at least four British ships of 350 tons register, with crews of twenty men each. At the rate of £30 for each family, the amount of bounty recently fixed by the colonial executive, exclusive of children, the present colonial land revenue will pay for the annual emigration of three thousand three hundred families of farm labourers, shepherds, and mechanics, from Great Britain and Ireland. Now, at the rate of one hundred families for each ship, a number which would require a vessel of 500 tons, the conveyance of these families to their colonial destination will afford profitable employment for six months together to thirty-three first class British merchant-ships, having crews of twenty-five or thirty men each, entirely at the expense of the colony of New South Wales; the profits of the voyage, including the outfit and provisions, being exclusively appropriated by British merchants. As for the emigrants themselves, they consist of families and individuals, who, before leaving the mother country, are in all likelihood a dead weight on the community; as they can only obtain subsistence by elbowing out of employment other deserving individuals of the