"Avaunt the fear Of numbers crowded in their native soil, To the prevention of all healthful growth Through mutual injury! Rather in the law Of increase, and the mandate from above, Rejoice!--and ye have special cause for joy. For, as the element of air affords An easy passage to the industrious bees, Fraught with their burdens, and a way as smooth, For those ordained to take their sounding flight From the thronged hive, and settle where they list, In fresh abodes--their labour to renew; So the wide waters open to the power, The will, the instincts, and the appointed needs Of Britain; do invite her to cast off Her swarms, and in succession send them forth Bound to establish new communities On every shore whose aspect favours hope Or bold adventure; promising to skill And perseverance their deserved reward." _Excursion_, book 9. How best to colonise; how far Government should undertake the regulation and control of the enterprise; how far leave it to the spirit and intelligence of private individuals, separate or banded together in groups, or companies; and especially under what terms it shall permit the occupation of the unappropriated soil--all these have become highly interesting topics of discussion. For ourselves, we will at once frankly confess that we have no faith in any model colonies, in ideals of any description, or in any "_Art_ of colonisation." What has been done, may be done again; what America is doing every day on the banks of the Mississippi, England may do in her Australian continent. With regard more particularly to the last and most important matter that can affect a new settlement, the mode of dealing with the land, it appears to us that the duties of Government are few, simple, and imperative--as simple in their character as they are indispensable. A previous survey, a moderate price, lots large and small to suit all purchasers--these are what we should require. The land-jobber, who interposes between Government and the emigrant, to make a cruel profit of the latter, must be kept out, either by laying a tax (as they do in America, under the denomination of the "Wild-land Tax,") on all land not reclaimed within a certain time, or by declaring the purchase forfeited, if, within that time, the soil is not cultivated. Government also must restrain its own hands from large grants to favoured individuals, who are no better than another species of land-jobbers. This, though a merely negative duty, will probably be the last performed, and the most imperfectly. Few readers are perhaps aware of the criminal ease with which the Government has been persuaded into lavish grants of land to persons who had, and could have, no immediate prospect of making use of it; enormous grants unjust to other settlers, and ruinous to the young colony, by dispersing the emigrants, interposing between them