Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/247

 shall bring forward a case of imagined necessity to authorize the application of a single farthing of the land-revenue to any other purpose than the one to which it was originally devoted, I mean the moral renovation of the country, they are questions which ought to be taken up and discussed dispassionately.

It is evident, however, that there will be no such case of alleged necessity during the year 1837; the estimated revenue for that year, which, in the present rapidly advancing condition of the colony, is always considerably under the amount actually realized, exceeding the estimated expenditure by £33,871. 10s. 10½d., independently of the probable balance of the land-revenue altogether. That balance arises from the demand for free labour in the colony being apparently below the existing means of supply; but this idea is altogether a fallacy, arising partly from a want of system and a want of energy on the part of the colonial executive, and partly from evident misconception in regard to the real interests of the colony, and the means it affords of rendering transportation really efficient in promoting the great ends of the imperial legislature. From evidence taken by a Committee of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, in regard to the actual demand for free labour in that colony