The duties collected in these southern settlements, are exactly on the same scale as at Port Jackson, and amount to about L5,000 annually, inclusive of the per centage allowed the collectors of them.

A general Statement of the Land in Cultivation, etc. the Quantities of Stock, etc. as accounted for at the General Muster in New South Wales, taken by His Excellency Governor Macquarie, and Deputy Commissary General Allan, commencing the 6th October, and finally closing the 25th November, 1817, inclusive; with an exact Account of the same at Van Diemen’s Land.

Acres in Wheat 18,462
         Ground prepared for Maize 11,714
         Barley 8561/2
         Oats 1563/4
         Pease and Beans 2041/4
         Potatoes 559
         Garden and Orchard 863
         Cleared ground 47,5641/4
         Total held 235,0031/4

Horses 3,072
Horned cattle 44,753
Sheep 170,920
Hogs 17,842
Bushels of Wheat 24,05 [sic]
Bushels of Maize 1,506

N. B. Total Number of Inhabitants in the Colony, including Van
Diemen’s Land, 20,379.

PART II.

OPERATION OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT IN THE COLONY
FOR THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS.

It is generally considered a matter of astonishment that the colony of New South Wales, situated as it is, in a climate equal to that of the finest parts of France, of Spain, and of Italy, and possessing a soil of unbounded fertility, should have made so little progress towards prosperity and independence.  The causes, however, which have contributed to its retardment, are the same, as have been attended with similar effects in all ages.  Not only the records of the years that are no more, but the experience also of the present day, concur in proving that the prosperity of nations is not so much the result of the fertility of their soil, and the benignity of their climate, as of the wisdom and policy of their institutions.  Decadence, poverty, wretchedness, and vice, have been the invariable attendants of bad governments; as prosperity, wealth, happiness, and virtue, have been of good ones.  Rome, once the glory of the world; now a bye-word among the nations:  once the seat of civilization, of affluence, and of power; now the abode of superstition, poverty, and weakness, is a lasting monument of the truth of this assertion.  Her greatness was founded on freedom, and rose with her consulate; her decadence may be said to have commenced with her first emperor, and was completed under his vicious and despotic dynasty:  her climate and soil still remain; but the freedom which raised her to the empire of the world has passed away with her institutions.