The only persons fit to undertake the hardships of a bush-life, are those who have obtained a certain degree of experience in their own country upon the paternal estate or farm. Men who have large families to provide for, and who have been successful in wood-clearing, are generally willing to sell their improvements, and purchase wild land for their families, whose united industry soon places them in a better farm than they owned before. They are thus rendered greater capitalists, with increased means of providing for their children, who soon take up their standing in society as its favoured class. Indeed, I would strongly advise gentlemen of small capital to purchase ready-cleared farms, which can be obtained in most parts of the country, with almost every convenience, for half what the clearing of bush-land would cost, especially by an inexperienced settler. In fact, since grants of land are no longer given to the emigrant, there is less inducement to go so far back into the woods. Since 1826, a steady influx of the working classes from Great Britain and Ireland has taken place. This has tended much to the prosperity of the country, by cheapening labour, and the settlement of vast tracts of wild land. Several experiments have been made by Government in sending out pauper emigration: that from the south of Ireland, under the superintendance of the late Hon. Peter Robinson in 1824, was the most extensive, and came more immediately under my own observation. I have understood that some most obnoxious and dangerous characters were shipped off in this expedition—no doubt to the great comfort of landlords, agents, and tithe-proctors. The Government behaved very liberally to these settlers. A grant of a hundred acres of good land was given to each head of a family, and to every son above twenty-one years of age. A good milch cow, and rations of pork and flour were assigned to each emigrant family. These provisions they continued to receive for upwards of eighteen months, besides a variety of stores, such as axes, hammers, saws, nails, grindstones, &c. A good log-shanty was also built on each settler’s lot. These people have done as well as could be expected, considering the material of which they were composed. It has been observed that, whenever these people were located amongst the Protestant population, they made much better settlers than when remaining with Catholics. In fact, a great improvement is perceptible in the morality, industry and education of the rising generation, who grow up more virtuous and less bigoted to their exclusive religious opinions. As a general rule, the English, Scotch, and north of Ireland men make much better and more independent colonists than emigrants from the south of Ireland. Seven years after the location of Robinson’s emigrants, a colony of Wiltshire people settled in the township of Dummer under many more disadvantages than those placed by Government in the township of Douro.