sunk two feet in the ground,0 3 0
Ditto, ditto, ditto, four bars, 0 2 6
Ditto, ditto, ditto, three bars, 0 2 0
Ditto, ditto, ditto, two bars, 0 1 9

The rates limited in this order are pretty well proportioned
to the present state of the colony; but the attempt to reduce the
value of labour to a permanent standard, further than regards the
convicts, must evidently be abortive; since labour, like
merchandize, will rise and fall with the demand which may exist
for it in the market where it is disposable;--and although the
above order might prevent the labourer from recovering in the
colonial courts, a greater price for his labour than is
stipulated in the foregoing schedule, still the moment it becomes
the interest of the employer to give higher wages, he will do so,
and the discredit attached to the non-performance of a deliberate
contract will always prevent him from having recourse to the
courts for avoiding the fulfilment of it. The above rates, it
will be seen, only refer to the various species of labour
immediately attached to agriculture. The wages of artificers,
particularly of such as are most useful in infant societies, are
considerably higher: a circumstance which is principally to be
attributed to the practice of selecting from among the convicts
all the best mechanics for the government works. Carpenters,
stone-masons, brick-layers, wheel and plough-wrights,
black-smiths, coopers, harness-makers, sawyers, shoe-makers,
cabinet-makers; and in fact all the most useful descriptions of
handicrafts, are consequently in very great demand, and can
easily earn from eight to ten shillings per day.

The price of land is entirely regulated by its situation and
quality. So long as four years back, a hundred and fifty acres of
very indifferent ground, about thre equarters of a mile from
Sydney, were sold by virtue of an execution, in lots of twelve
acres each, and averaged L14 per acre. This, however, is
the highest price that has yet been given for land not situated
in a town. The general value of unimproved forest land, when it
is not heightened by some advantageous locality, as proximity to
a town or navigable river, cannot be estimated at more than five
shillings per acre. Flooded land will fetch double that sum. But
on the banks of the Hawkesbury, as far as that river is
navigable, the value of land is consider