Page:Transportation and colonization.djvu/89

 and virtuous free emigrants from the mother country, at the rate of three thousand families and upwards every year: and as the rapid extension and advancement of the colony will afford ample means of settling these families in its ample territory, so will their moral and religious influence on the general population be rendered beneficial in the highest degree by another arrangement of a most important bearing, for which the colonists are indebted, in great measure, to the enlightened liberality of the present governor, Major-General Sir Richard Bourke. In virtue of that arrangement, every small community, in whatever part of the colonial territory, will henceforth be enabled to secure the services of an efficient schoolmaster, as well as of a resident minister of religion of their own communion. The combined influence of these arrangements—the annual introduction and progressive settlement of large bodies of free emigrants, for whose intellectual and spiritual welfare effectual provision is thus prospectively made by the colonial legislature—will doubtless eventually change the whole aspect and character of the colony of New South Wales; gradually undoing the past evil effects of the transportation system, and rendering transportation powerfully efficient for the future, both for the prevention of crime and for the reformation of criminals.