On the determination of the government being announced, the settlers manifested great repugnance: the elder people declared they would not quit the country; it was, however, the decree of an irresistible will. The inhabitants were offered a settlement in Van Diemen's Land or New South Wales; mostly, they chose this country. They received from the government whatever would contribute towards reconciling them to the change. Vessels were provided for their removal, their possession in land was doubled, and it was freed from all conditions and reservations. They received cattle on loan, and they were rationed as new settlers from the public stores. That the change was beneficial to the rising generation can hardly be doubted; but the effect on the parents was generally painful. Time was required to equal the cultivation of the spot they had left, compared with which even Van Diemen's Land seemed blank and barren. Years after, they spoke of the change with regret and sadness. The settlers, divided into three classes, according to their origin or wealth, were located part in the neighbourhood of Hobart Town, at Pittwater, and New Norfolk, and part at Norfolk Plains. Thirty, forty, or fifty acres was the ordinary grant, until a later period: a large extent was neither possessed nor desired. Many valued nothing but the immediate benefits to which their character as immigrant farmers then entitled them. They drew their rations from the royal stores, and bartered away their homesteads for a few bottles of spirit; and it was no idle boast, that a keg of rum was then worth more than a common farm. Their hopeless and dissipated state is remarked in every document of the times: their frail dwellings soon exhibited all the signs of decay, and their ground was exhausted by continual cropping. Thus the exhilarating influences of youth and vigour, usual in the first steps of colonisation, were here unknown, and a civilising agency rarely counteracted the social evils which prevailed. The transactions of those early days are scarcely colonial: charged with debauch and outrage, they denote a time of social disorganisation--the dark ages found in the history of every country, where men have been their own masters, and remote from a public opinion, which cannot be corrupted or controlled. There were, however, a few settlers from Norfolk Island, distinguished from the rest by their enterprise and diligence, and who rose to wealth; but in glancing down the list, a colonist observes how few have retained their heritage. During the administration of Colonel Collins, the progress of the colony was barely perceptible. There were no roads in the interior; no public buildings: the house of the governor was a mere cottage, too mean for the accommodation of a modern mechanic.