relation to their future welfare. The resolution is as follows:

"That a memorial to the House of Commons be drawn up, soliciting a remission of fines due under the land-regulations, and a grant of fee-simple to settlers under certain circumstances; viz. those having expended large sums on small parcels of land, considering the same as portions of their several grants from the crown.”

The estates of absentees who have not expended any capital on them, or on any estates obtained at the same time, are left to the operative effects of the law, and unless immediately cultivated they will be forfeited to the crown: such were the conditions on which they were obtained, and consequently, for the public good, they should be enforced. In a former chapter, some remarks have been made on the power assumed by the government on the formation of roads, the building of bridges, and local assessments. If the colonists were to get those powers rescinded, and the power of enforcing local assessments for local purposes substituted, it is evident, that the possessor of uncultivated lands would be compelled either to surrender them to more useful colonists, or to cultivate them himself. The most liberal construction should be extended to early settlers, who have risked so much, and who might have had ample means of bringing their grants into cultivation, if the ignorance of the government in the principles of colonisation had not placed them, from force of circumstances, in a

APPEAL OF THE ARCHBISHOP.

119

position in which the losses so entailed on them deprived them of the means of fulfilling the conditions. The rapid progress of the colony depends, in some degree, on the arrangement of this question to the new settler it is not of equal importance, and of still less to the emigrant labourer.

As the condition of the colonists must not be confined to the mere statistical return, since that report, however flattering, must in great measure depend on the moral and religious condition of the community-the sources from which flow industry, temperance, and good conduct-it is to be hoped that the appeal of the Archbishop of Canterbury, made on the 24th of July, will receive due attention. It was in the form of a petition from the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, praying the House of Lords to take measures for increasing the amount of spiritual instruction in the colonies in connexion with the Established Church, especially in the Australian colonies. Sincere spiritual instruction, from well-educated men of any Christian persuasion, must have a tendency to support the condition of the colonists, by awakening in the young, and strengthening in the old, those habits of thought and action on which, with but few exceptions, worldly success in great measure depends. Sir James Stirling, after speaking in the highest terms of the moral state of the colony, with candour laments the propensity to intoxication among the lower classes, from the facility of procuring spirits. The authorities and higher

orders should take immediate measures to check the evil, as it is closely connected with the welfare of the colony, taken in the extended sense in which it ought to be.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.

The

THIS admirable institution was founded in the first year of the settlement; and the reports have been drawn up in a clear and masterly style. members are admitted by ballot, and now comprise almost all the owners of land. Four regular meetings are held each year; and on subjects of importance connected with land, special meetings are convened-as lately, on the notice from the governor of the intended resumption of grants on which the agreements had not been fulfilled. Sir James Stirling reports to the colonial secretary, that "the society has promoted good conduct amongst farmservants, by giving distinctions and prizes to the best-conducted and most efficient labourers; and in other respects it has tended, in a very considerable degree, to promote the customary objects of such institutions."

To give a clear proof of the care and ability of this society, and to shew the emigrant how perfectly the institutions of this country have been continued in Western Australia, the last report is here inserted; as it affords the most complete map of the present state and prospects of the colony.

Report of the Committee appointed at a Meeting of the Agricultural Society on the 3d day of August, 1838, to take into consideration the present State and Condition of the Colony of Western Australia.

YOUR Committee, having proceeded to act in the discharge of their duties, found their labours at the commencement materially advanced by having been kindly presented by his excellency, Governor Sir James Stirling, with a copy of a statistical report which he had caused to be prepared for the purpose of being transmitted to the right honourable the secretary for the colonies. That document has, upon examination, been found at once so accurate and comprehensive in its details, so satisfactory in its arrangement, and so important in its substance, that they are desirous of bringing it particularly under the notice of the society, with a recommendation that it should be adopted and forwarded by the society with their cordial approbation, sanction, and concurrence, as it has in a great degree anticipated their views and desires. Your committee desire to direct the attention of the society especially to the table shewing the amount of aggregate and average wealth in the colony, which exhibits some very gratifying results, and affords a triumphant refutation of all those statements which have been so confidently made, and so industriously and perseveringly propagated, to the prejudice of this colony; and which betray