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He may be a very hospitable archdeacon; but nothing short of a positive miracle can make him an acute

reasoner.

MATTHEW LEWIS. (EDINBurgh Review, 1803.)
Alfonso King of Castile. A Tragedy, in five Acts. By M.
G. Lewis. Price 2s. 6d.

Mr. Lewis will excuse us for the liberty we take in commenting on a few passages in his play which appear to us rather exceptionable. The only information which Cæsario, imagining his father to have been dead for many years, receives of his existence, is in the following short speech of Melchior.

'MELCH. The Count San Lucar, long thought dead, but s
ved,

It seems, by Amelrosa's care.-Time presses
I must away: farewell.'

To this laconic, but important information, Cæsario makes no reply, but merely desires Melchior to meet him at one o'clock, under the Royal Tower, and for some other purposes.

In the few cases which have fallen under our observation, of fathers restored to life after a supposed death of twenty years, the parties concerned have, on the first information, appeared a little surprised, and generally asked a few questions-though we do not go the length of saying it is natural to do so. This same Cosario, (whose love of his father is a principal cause of his conspiracy against the King) begins criticising the old warrior, upon his first seeing him again, much as a virtuoso would criticise an old statue that wanted an arm or a leg.

CESARIO.

"ORSINO enters from the cave.

Now by my life
A noble ruin!'

ALFONSO, king of Castile, had, many years previous to the supposed epoch of the play, left his minister and general, Orsino, to perish in prison, from a false accusation of treason. Cæsario, son to Orsino, (who by accident had liberated Ameírosa, daughter of Alfonso, from the Moors, and who is married to her, unknown to the father,) becomes a great favourite with the King, and avails himself of the command of the armies with which he is intrusted, to gratify his revenge for his father's misfortunes, to forward his own ambitious views, and to lay a plot by which he may deprive Alfonso of his throne and his life. Marquis Guzman, poisoned by his wife Ottilia in love with Cæsario, confesses to the King that the papers upon which the suspicion of Orsino's guilt was founded, were forged by him: and the King, learning from his daughter Amelrosa that Orsino is still alive, repairs to his retreat in the forest, is received with the most implacable hauteur and resentment, and in vain implores forgiveness of his injured minister. To the same forest, Cæsario, informed of the existence of his father, repairs, and reveals his intended plot against the King. Orsino, convinced of Alfonso's goodness to his subjects, though incapable of forgiving him for his unintentional injuries to himself, in vain dissuades his son from the conspiracy; and at last, ignorant of their marriage, acquaints Amelrosa with the plot formed by her husband against her father. Amelrosa, already poisoned by Ottilia, in vain attempts to What judge of human feelings does not recognize in prevent Cæsario from blowing up a mine laid under these images of silver wings, doves and honey, the gethe royal palace; information of which she had re-nuine language of the passions? ceived from Ottilia, stabbed by Cresario to avoid her If Mr. Lewis is really in earnest in pointing out the Importunity. In the mean time, the King had been coincidence between his own dramatic sentiments, and removed from the palace by Orsino, to his ancient the Gospel of St. Matthew, such a reference (wide as retreat in the forest: the people rise against the we know this assertion to be) evinces a want of judgusurper Cæsario; a battle takes place: Orsino stabs ment of which we did not think him capable. If it pro his own son, at the moment the King is in his son's ceeded from irreligious levity, we pity the man who power; falls down from the wounds he bas received has bad taste enough not to prefer honest dulness to in battle; and dies in the usual dramatic style, re- such paltry celebrity. peating twenty-two hexameter verses. Mr. Lewis says in his preface

To the assertion, that my play is stupid, I have nothing to object; if it be found so, even let it be so said; but if (as was most falsely asserted of Adelmorn) any anonymous writer should advance that this Tragedy is immoral, I expect him to prove his assertion by quoting the objectionable passages. This I demand as an act of justice.'

We confess ourselves to have been highly delighted with these symptoms of returning, or perhaps nascent purity in the mind of Mr. Lewis-a delight somewhat impaired, to be sure, at the opening of the play, by the following explanation which Ottilia gives of her early rising.

'ACT I. SCENE I.-The palace garden.-Day-break. OTTILIA enters in a night-dress: her hair flows dishevelled. OTTIL. Dews of the morn descend! Breathe, summer gales:

My flushed cheeks woo ye! Play, sweet wantons, play
'Mid my loose tresses, fan my panting breast,
Quench my blood's burning fever!-Vain, vain prayer!
Not Winter throned 'midst Alpine snows, whose will
Can with one breath, one touch, congeal whole realms,
And blanch whole seas: not tha: fiend's self could ease
This heart, this gulf of flames, his purple kingdom,
Where passion rules and rages!'

Amelrosa, who imagines her father to have banished her from his presence for ever, in the first transports of pardon, obtained by earnest intercessions, thus exclaims:

Lend thy doves, dear Venus,

That I may send them where Cæsario strays:
And while he smooths their silver wings, and gives them
For drink the honey of his lips, I'll bid them
Coo in his ear, his Amelrosa's happy!'

We beg leave to submit to Mr. Lewis, if Alfonso, considering the great interest he has in the decision, might not interfere a little in the long argument carried on between Cæsario and Orsino, upon the propriety of putting him to death. To have expressed any decisive opinion upon the subject, might perhaps have been incorrect; but a few gentle hints as to that side of the question to which he leaned, might be fairly allowed to be no very unnatural incident.

This tragedy delights in explosions. Alfonso's empire is destroyed by a blast of gunpowder, and restored by a clap of thunder. After the death of Cusario, and a short exhortation to that purpose by Orsino, all the conspirators fall down in a thunderclap, ask pardon of the king, and are forgiven. This mixture of physical and moral power is beautiful! How interesting a water-spout would appear among Mr. Lewis's kings and queens! We anxiously look forward, in his next tragedy, to a fall of snow three or four feet deep; or expect that a plot shall gradually unfold itself by means of a general thaw.

All is not so bad in this play. There is some strong painting, which shows, every now and then, the hand of a master. The agitation which Cæsario exhibits upon his first joining the conspirators in a cave, previous to the blowing up of the mine, and immediately

Ottilia at last becomes quite furious, from the convic-after stabbing Ottilia, is very fine. tion that Cæsario has been sleeping with a second lady, called Estella; whereas be has really been sleeping with a third lady, called Amelrosa. Passing across the stage, this gallant gentleman takes an opportunity of mentioning to the audience that he has been passing his time very agreeably, meets Cttilia, quarrels, makes it up; and so end the first two or three scenes.

CESARIO. Ay, shout, shout,

And kneeling greet your blood-annointed king,
This steel his sceptre! Tremble, dwarfs in guilt,
And own your master! Thou art proof, Henriquez,
'Gainst pity; I once saw thee stab in battle

A page who clasped thy knees: And Melchoir there
Made quick work with a brother whom he hated.
But what did I this night? Hear, hear, and reverence!

There was a breast on which my head had rested
A thousand times; a breast which loved me fondly
As heaven loves martyred saints: and yet this breast
I stabbed, knave-stabbed it to the heart-Wine!
wine there?

For my soul's joyous!'-p. 86.

The resistance which Amelrosa opposes to the firing of the mine, is well wrought out; and there is some good poetry scattered up and down the play, of which we should very willingly make extracts if our limits would permit. The ill success which it has justly experienced, is owing, we have no doubt, to the want of nature in the characters, and of probability and good arrangement in the incidents; objections of some force.

AUSTRALIA. (EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1803.)
Account of the English Colony of New South Wales. By
Lieutenant-Colonel Collins of the Royal Marines.
H. 4to. Cadell and Davies, London.

sure of novelty has ceased. For these reasons, it is humane to restore him to sight.

mankind the civilization of barbarous countries may But, however beneficial to the general interests of be, in this particular instance of it, the interest of Great Britain would seem to have been very little consulted. With fanciful schemes of universal good we have no business to meddle. Why are we to erect penitentiary houses and prisons at the distance of half the diameter of the globe, and to incur the enormous expense of transporting their inhabitants to and at such a distance, it is extremely difficult to discover. It certainly is not from any deficiency of barren islands on our own coast, nor of uncultivated wastes in the interior; and if we were sufficiently fortunate to be wanting in such species of accomodation, we might discover in Canada, or the West Indies, or on the coast of Africa, a climate malignant enough, or a soil sufficiently sterile, to revenge all the injuries which have been inflicted on society by pick-pockets, larcenists, and petty felons. Upon the foundation of a new colony, and especially one peopled by criminals, To introduce an European population, and, conse- there is a disposition in Government (where any cir quently, the arts and civilization of Europe, into such cumstance in the commission of the crime affords the an untrodden country as New Holland, is to confer a least pretence for the commutation) to convert capital lasting and important benefit upon the world. If man punishment into transportation; and by these means be destined for perpetual activity, and if the proper to hold forth a very dangerous, though certainly a objects of that activity be the subjugation of physical very unintentional encouragement to offences. And difficulties, and of his own dangerous passions, how when the history of the colony has been attentively absurd are those systems which proscribe the acquisi-perused in the parish of St. Giles, the ancient avoca tions of science and the restraints of law, and would tion of picking pockets will certainly not become more arrest the progress of man in the rudest and earliest discreditable from the knowledge that it may evenstages of his existence! Indeed, opinions so very extravagant in their nature must be attributed rather to the wantonness of paradox, than to sober reflection and extended inquiry.

Vol.

tually lead to the possession of a farm of a thousand acres on the river Hawkesbury. Since the benevolent Howard attacked our prisons, incarceration has not only become healthy but elegant; and a county jail is To suppose the savage state permanent, we must precisely the place to which any pauper might wish suppose the numbers of those who compose it to be to retire to gratify his taste for magnificence as well stationary, and the various passions by which men as for comfort. Upon the same principle, there is have actually emerged from it to be extinct; and this some risk that transportation will be considered as is to suppose man a very different being from what he one of the surest roads to honour and to wealth; and really is. To prove such a permanence beneficial, (if that no felon will hear a verdict of not guilty without it were possible), we must have recourse to matter of considering himself as cut off in the fairest career of fact, and judge of the rude state of society, not from prosperity. It is foolishly believed, that the colony the praises of tranquil literati, but from the narratives of Botany Bay unites our moral and commercial inte of those who have seen it through a nearer and better rests, and that we shall receive hereafter an ample medium than that of imagination. There is an argu. equivalent, in bales of goods, for all the vices we exment, however, for the continuation of evil, drawn port. Unfortunately, the expenses we have incurred from the ignorance of good; by which it is contended, in founding the colony, will not retard the natural prothat to teach men their situation can be better, is to gress of its emancipation, or prevent the attacks of teach them that it is bad, and to destroy that happi- other nations, who will be as desirous of reaping the ness which always results from an ignorance that any fruit, as if they had sown the seed. It is a colony, greater happiness is within our reach. All pains and besides, begun under every possible disadvantage; it is pleasures are clearly by comparison; but the most de- too distant to be long governed, or well defended; it plorable savage enjoys a sufficient contrast of good, to is undertaken, not by the voluntary association of inknow that the grosser evils from which civilization dividuals, but by Government, and by means of comrescues him are evils. A New Hollander seldom pas-pulsory labour. A nation must, indeed, be redundant ses a year without suffering from famine; the small-in capital, that will expend it where the hopes of a just pox falls upon him like a plague; he dreads those return are so very small.

human calamities.

calamities, though he does not know how to avert It may be a very curious consideration what we are them; but, doubtless, would find his happiness in- to do with this colony when it comes to years of d creased, it they were averted. To deny this, is to sup-cretion. Are we to spend another hundred millions pose that men are reconciled to evils because they are of money in discovering its strength, and to humble inevitable; and yet hurricanes, earthquakes, bodily ourselves again before a fresh set of Washingtons decay, and death, stand highest in the catalogue of and Franklins. The moment after we have suffered such serious mischief from the escape of the old tiger, Where civilization gives new birth to new compari- we are breeding up a young cub, whom we cannot rensons unfavourable to savage life, with the information cer less ferocious or more secure. If we are gradualthat a greater good is possible, it generally connects ly to manumit the colony, as it is more and more ca. the means of attaining it. The savage no sooner be-pable of protecting itself, the degrees of emancipation, comes ashamed of his nakedness than the loom is and the periods at which they are to take place, will ready to clothe him; the forge prepares for him more be judged of very differently by the two nations. But perfect tools, when he is disgusted with the awkward- we confess ourselves not to be so sanguine as to supness of his own; his weakness is strengthened, and his pose, that a spirited and commercial people would, in wants are supplied as soon as they are discovered; and spite of the example of America, ever consent to aban the use of the discovery is, that it enables him to derive don their sovereignty over an important colony withfrom comparison the best proof of present happiness. out a struggle. Endless blood and treasure will be A man born blind is ignorant of the pleasures of which exhausted to support a tax on kangaroos' skins; he is deprived. After the restoration of his sight his faithful Commons will go on voting fresh supplies to happiness will be increased from two causes ;-from support a just and necessary war; and Newgate, then the delight he experiences at the novel accession of become a quarter of the world, will evince a heroism, power, and from the contrast he will always be enabled not unworthy of the great characters by whom she to make between his two situations, long after the plea-was originally peopled.

The experiment, however, is not less interesting in a moral, because it is objectionable in a commercial point of view. It is an object of the highest curiosity, thus to have the growth of a nation subjected to our examination; to trace it by such faithful records, from the first day of its existence; and to gather that knowledge of the progress of human affairs, from actual experience, which is considered to be only accessible to the conjectural reflections of enlightened minds.

Human nature, under very old governments, is so trimmed, and pruned, and ornamented, and led into such a variety of factitious shapes, that we are almost ignorant of the appearance it would assume, if it were left more to itself. From such an experiment as that now before us, we shall be better able to appreciate what circumstances of our situation are owing to those permanent laws by which all men are influenced, and what to the accidental positions in which we have been placed. New circumstances will throw new light upon the effects of our religious, political, and economical institutions, if we cause them to be adopted as models in our rising empire; and if we do not, we shall estimate the effects of their presence, by observing those which are produced by their non-exist

womb; which violence not unfrequently occasions the death of the unnatural mother also. To this they have recourse to avoid the trouble of carrying the infant about when born, which, when it is very young, or at the breast, tive purpose is termed Mee-bra. The burying an infant is the duty of the woman. The operation for this destruc(when at the breast) with the mother, if she should die, is another shocking cause of the thinness of population among them. The fact that such an operation as the Mee-bra was practised by these wretched people, was communicated by one of the natives to the principal surgeon of the settlement.'-(p. 124, 125.)

It is remarkable, that the same paucity of numbers has been observed in every part of New Holland which has hitherto been explored; and yet there is not the smallest reason to conjecture that the population of it has been very recent; nor do the people bear any marks of descent from the inhabitants of the numerous islands by which this great continent is surrounded. The force of population can only be resisted by some great physical evils; and many of the causes of this scarcity of human beings which Mr. Collins refers to the ferocity of the natives, are ultimately referable to the difficulty of support. We have always considered this phenomenon as a symptom extremely unfavourable to the future destinies of this country. It is easy The history of the colony is at present, however, in to launch out into eulogiums of the fertility of nature its least interesting state, on account of the great pre-in particular spots; but the most probable reason why ponderance of depraved inhabitants, whose crimes and irregularities give a monotony to the narrative, which it cannot lose, till the respectable part of the community come to bear a greater proportion to the criminal.

ence.

a country that has been long inhabited, is not well inhabited, is, that it is not calculated to support many inhabitants without great labour. It is difficult to suppose any other causes powerful enough to resist the impetuous tendency of man, to obey that mandate for increase and multiplication, which has certainly been better observed than any other declaration of the Divine will ever revealed to us.

These Memoirs of Colonel Collins resume the history of the colony from the period at which he concluded it in his former volume, September, 1796, and continue it down to August 1801. They are written in the There appears to be some tendency to civilization, style of a journal, which though not the most agreeable and some tolerable notions of justice, in a practice very mode of conveying information, is certainly the most similar to our custom of duelling; for duelling, though authentic, and contrives to banish the suspicion, and barbarous in civilized, is a highly civilized institution most probably the reality, of the interference of a book- among barbarous people: and when compared to asmaker-a species of gentlemen who are now almost be-sassination, is a prodigious victory gained over human come necessary to deliver naval and military authors passions. Whoever kills another in the neighbourhood in their literary labours, though they do not always of Botany Bay, is compelled to appear at an appointed atone, by orthography and grammar, for the sacrifice of day before the friends of the deceased, and to sustain truth and simplicity. Mr. Collins's book appears to be the attacks of their missile weapons. If he is killed, written with great plainness and candour; he appears to he is deemed to have met with a deserved death; if be a man always meaning well; of good, plain, com- not, he is considered to have expiated the crime for mon sense; and composed of those well-wearing mate- the commission of which he was exposed to danger. rials which adapt a person for situations where genius There is in this institution a command over present and refinement would only prove a source of misery and impulses, a prevention of secrecy in the gratification of error. of revenge, and a wholesome correction of that passion by the effect of public observation, which evince a suges, and form such a contrast to the rest of the history The natives in the vicinity of Port Jackson stand ex- of this people, that it may be considered as altogether tremely low, in point of civilization, when compared an anomalous and inexplicable fact. The natives differ with many other savages with whom the discoveries of very much in the progress they have made in the arts Captain Cook have made us acquainted. Their no- of economy. Those to the north of Port Jackson tions of religion exceed even that degree of absurdity evince a considerable degree of ingenuity and contriwhich we are led to expect in the creed of a barbarous vance in the structure of their houses, which are renpeople. In politics they appear to be scarcely advan-dered quite impervious to the weather, while the inced beyond family-government. Huts they have none; habitants at Port Jackson have no houses at all. At and, in all their economical inventions, there is a rudeness and deficiency of ingenuity, unpleasant, when contrasted with the instances of dexterity with which the descriptions and importations of our navigators have rendered us so familiar. Their numbers appear to us to be very small a fact, at once, indicative either of the ferocity of manners in any people, or more probably, of the sterility of their country; but which, in the present instance proceeds from both

We shall proceed to lay before our readers an analysis of the most important matter contained in this vo-periority to the mere animal passions of ordinary savalume.

these causes.

Port Dalrymple, in Van Dieman's Land, there was eve ry reason to believe the natives were unacquainted with the use of canoes; a fact extremely embarrassing to those who indulge themselves in speculating on the genealogy of nations; because it reduces them to the necessity of supposing that the progenitors of this insular people swam over from the main land, or that they were aboriginal; a species of dilemma, which effectually bars all conjecture upon the intermixture of nations. It is painful to learn, that the natives have Gaining every day (says Mr. Collins) some further begun to plunder and rob in so very alarming a manknowledge of the inhuman habits and customs of these peo-ner that it has been repeatedly found necessary to fire ple, their being so thinly scattered through the country upon them; and many have, in consequence, fallen ceased to be a matter of surprise. It was almost daily seen, victims to their rashness. that from some trifling cause or other, they were continually living in a state of warfare: to this must be added their brutal treatment of their women, who are themselves equally destructive to the measure of population, by the horrid and cruel custom of endeavouring to cause a miscar riage, which their female acquaintances effect by pressing the body in such a way, as to destroy the infant in the

The soil is found to produce coal in vast abundance, salt, lime, very fine iron ore, timber fit for all purposes, excellent flax, and a tree, the bark of which is admirably adapted for cordage. The discovery of coal (which, by the by, we do not believe was ever before discovered so near the line) is probably rather a disad

vantage than an advantage; because, as it lies extreme- | high eulogiums which have been made on the fertility ly favourable for sea carriage, it may prove to be a of the female sex in the climate of New Holland. cheaper fuel than wood, and thus operate as a discour The Governor, who appears on all occasions to be agement to the clearing of lands. The soil upon the an extremely well-disposed man, is not quite so consea-coast has not been found to be very productive, versant in the best writings on political economy as though it improves in partial spots in the interior. The we could wish: and indeed (though such knowledge climate is healthy, in spite of the prodigious heat of would be extremely serviceable to the interests which the summer months, at which period the thermometer this Romulus of the Southern Pole is superintending,) has been observed to stand in the shade at 107, and it is rather unfair to exact from a superintendent of the leaves of garden vegetables to fall into dust, as if pick-pockets, that he should be a philosopher. In the they had been consumed with fire. But one of the 18th page we have the following information respectmost insuperable defects in New Holland, considered ing the price of labour :-as the future country of a great people, is, the want of large rivers penetrating very far into the interior, and navigable for small crafts. The Hawkesbury, the largest river yet discovered, is not accessible to boats for more than twenty miles. This same river occasionally rises above its natural level, to the astonishing height of fifty feet; and has swept away, more than once, the labours and the hopes of the new people exi

led to its banks.

vernor from the settlers in different parts of the colony, Some representations having been made to the Gopurporting that the wages demanded by the free labouring people, whom they had occasion to hire, were so exorbitant as to run away with the greatest part of the profit of their farms, it was recommended to them to appoint quarterly meetings among themselves, to be held in each district, for the purpose of settling the rate of wages to labourers in every different kind of work; that, to this end, a written agreement should be entered into, and subscribed by each The laborious acquisition of any good we have long settler, a breach of which should be punished by a penalty, enjoyed is apt to be forgotten. We walk and talk, to be fixed by the general opinion, and made recoverable in and run and read, without remembering the long and a court of civil judicature. It was recommended to them to severe labour dedicated to the cultivation of these apply this forfeiture to the common benefit; and they were powers, the formidable obstacles opposed to our pro- with the rate of wages which they should from time to time to transmit to the head-quarters a copy of their agreement, gress, or the infinite satisfaction with which we over-establish, for the Governor's information, holding their first came them. He who lives among a civilized people, meeting as early as possible.' may estimate the labour by which society has been brought into such a state, by reading these annals of Botany Bay, the account of a whole nation exert ing itself to new floor the government-house, repair the hospital, or build a wooden receptacle for stores. Yet the time may come, when some Botany Bay Tacitus shall record the crimes of an emperor lineally descend. ed from a London pick-pocket, or paint the valour with which he has led his New Hollanders into the heart of China. At that period, when the Grand Lahma is sending to supplicate alliance; when the spice islands are purchasing peace with nutmegs; when enormous tributes of green tea and nankeen are wafted into Ported, Jackson, and landed on the quays of Sydney, who will ever remember that the sawing of a few planks, and the knocking together a few nails, were such a serious trial of the energies and resources of the nation.

The Government of the colony, after enjoying some little respite from this kind of labour, has begun to turn its attention to the coarsest and most necessary species of manufactures, for which their wool appears to be well adapted. The state of stock in the whole settlement, in June 1801, was about 7,000 sheep, 1,300 head of cattle, 250 horses, and 5,000 hogs. There were under cultivation at the same time, be tween 9 and 10,000 acres of corn. Three years and a-half before this, in December 1797, the numbers were as follows:-Sheep, 2,500; cattle, 350; horses, 100; hogs, 4,300; acres of land in cultivation, 4,000. The temptation to salt pork, and sell it for Government store, is probably the reason why the breed of hogs has been so much kept under. The increase of cultivated lands between the two periods is prodigious. It appears (p. 319,) that the whole number of convicts imported between January 1788 and June 1801 (a period of thirteen years and a half,) has been about 5,000, of whom 1,157 were females. The total amount of the population on the continent, as well as at Norfolk Island, amounted, June 1801, to 6,500 persons; of these 766 were children born at Port Jackson. In the returns from Norfolk Island, children are not discriminated from adults. Let us add to the imported population of 5,000 convicts, 500 free people, which (if we consider that a regiment of soldiers has been kept up there) is certainly a very small allowance; then, in thirteen years and a half, the imported popu lation has increased only by two-thirteenths. If we suppose that something more than a fifth of the free people were women, this will make the total of women 1,210; of whom we may fairly presume that 800 were capable of child-bearing; and if we suppose the children of Norfolk Island to bear the same proportion to the adults as at Port Jackson, their total number at both settlements will be 913-a state of infantine population which certainly does not justify the very

B

And again, at p. 24, the following arrangements on that head are enacted :

In pursuance of the order which was issued in January last recommending the settlers to appoint meetings, at which they should fix the rate of wages that it might be proper to pay for the different kinds of labour which their farms should require, the settlers had submitted to the Governor the several resolutions that they had entered into, by which he was enabled to fix a rate that he conceived to be fair and equitable between the farmer and the labourer. 'The following prices of labour were now establishviz.

Felling forest timber, per acre
Ditto in brush ground, ditto
Burning off open ground, ditto
Ditto brush ground,

ditto

Breaking up new ground,ditto
Chipping fresh ground, ditto
Chipping in wheat,

ditto

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Breaking up stubble or corn ground, 1 1-4d.
per rod, or

Thrashing ditto, per bushel,

Pulling and husking Indian corn,per bushel
Splitting paling of seven feet long, per h'd
Ditto of five feet long, ditto
Sawing plank,

ditto

Ditching, per rod, three feet wide and three
feet deep

Carriage of wheat, per bushel, per mile
Ditto Indian corn, neat

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Yearly wages for labour, with board
Wages per week, with provisions, consist-
ing of 3 lb. of salt pork, or 6 lb. of fresh,
and 21 lb. of wheat with vegetables

A day's wages with board.
Ditto without board

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"The settlers were reminded, that, in order to prevent any kind of dispute between the master and servant, when they should have occasion to hire a man for any length of time, they would find it most convenient to engage him for a quarter, half-year, or year, and to make their agreement in writing; on which, should any dispute arise, an appeal to the magistrates would settle it.

whom the straits have been named, and who was led to a suspicion of their existence by a prodigious swell which he observed to set in from the westward, at the mouth of the opening which he had reached on a voyage of discovery, prosecuted in a common whale. boat. To verify this suspicion, he proceeded afterwards in a vessel of 25 tons, accompanied by Mr. Flanders, a naval gentleman; and, entering the straits between the latitudes of 39° and 40° south, actually circumnavigated Van Diemen's Land. Mr. Bass's ideas of the importance of this discovery, we shall give from his narrative, as reported by Mr. Collins.

This is all very bad; and if the Governor had cherished the intention of destroying the colony, he could have done nothing more detrimental to its interests. The high price of labour is the very corner-stone on which the prosperity of a new colony depends. It enables the poor man to live with ease; and is the strongest incitement to population, by rendering children rather a source of riches than of poverty. If the same difficulty of subsistence existed in new countries as in old, it is plain that the progress of population would be equally slow in each. The very circumstances which cause the difference are, that, in the latter, there is a competition among the labourers to be employed; and, in the former, a competition among The most prominent advantage which seemed likely to the occupiers of land to obtain labourers. In the one, diting of the passage from the Cape of Good Hope to Port accrue to the settlement from this discovery was, the expeland is scarce and men plenty; in the other, men are Jackson; for, although a line drawn from the Cape to 44° scarce and land is plenty. To disturb this natural of south latitude, and to the longitude of the South Cape of order of things (a practice injurious at all times) must Van Diemen's Land, would not sensibly differ from one be particularly so where the predominant disposition drawn to the latitude of 40° to the same longitude; yet it of the colonist is an aversion to labour, produced by a must be allowed, that a ship will be four degrees nearer to long course of dissolute habits. In such cases the Port Jackson in the latter situation than it would be in the high prices of labour, which the Governor was so de- former. But there is, perhaps, a greater advantage to be sirous of abating, bid fair not only to increase the gained by making a passage through the strait, than the mere saving of four degrees of latitude along the coast. agricultural prosperity, but to effect the moral refor. The major part of the ships that have arrived at Port Jackmation of the colony. We observe the same unfor- son have met with N. E. winds, on opening the sea round tunate ignorance of the elementary principles of com-the South Cape and Cape Pillar; and have been so much merce in the attempts of the Governor to reduce the retarded by them, that a fourteen days' passage to the port prices of the European commodities, by bulletins and is reckoned to be a fair one, although the difference of latiauthoritative interference, as if there were any other tude is but ten degrees, and the most prevailing winds at mode of lowering the price of an article (while the the latter place are from S. E. to S. in summer, and from demand continues the same) but by increasing its these N. E. winds can be avoided, which in many cases W. S. W. to S. in winter. If, by going through Bass Strait, quantity. The avaricious love of gain, which is so would probably be the case, there is no doubt but a week or feelingly deplored, appears to us a principle which, more would be gained by it; and the expense, with the in able hands, might be guided to the most salutary wear and tear of the ship for one week, are objects to most purposes. The object is to encourage the love of owners, more especially when freighted with convicts by labour, which is best encouraged by the love of money. We have very great doubts on the policy of reserving the best timber on the estates as government timber. Such a reservation would probably operate as a check upon the clearing of lands without attaining the object desired; for the timber, instead of being immediately cleared, would be slowly destroyed, by the neglect or malice of the settlers whose lands it encumbered. Timber is such a drug in new countries, that it is at any time to be purchased for little more than the labour of cutting. To secure a supply of it by vexatious and invidious laws, is surely a work of supererogation and danger. The greatest evil which the government has yet had to contend with is, the inordinate use of spirituous liquors; a passion which puts the interests of agriculture at variance with those of morals: for a dram-drinker will consume as much corn in the form of alcohol, in one day, as would supply him with bread for three; and thus, by his vices, opens an admirable market to the industry of a new settlement. The only mode, we believe, of encountering this evil, is by deriving from it such a revenue as will not admit of smuggling. Beyond this it is almost invincible by authority; and it is probably to be cured only by the progressive refinement of

manners.

To evince the increasing commerce of the settlement, a list is subjoined of 140 ships, which have arrived there since its first foundation, forty only of which were from England. The colony at Norfolk Island is represented to be in a very deplorable situation, and will most probably be abandoned for one about to be formed on Van Diemen's Land, though the capital defect of the former settlement has been partly obviated, by a discovery of the harbour for small craft.

The most important and curious information contained in this volume, is the discovery of straits which separate Van Diemen's Land (hitherto considered as its southern extremity) from New Holland. For this discovery we are indebted to Mr. Bass, a surgeon, after

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the run.

the prevalence of the N. E. and easterly winds off the South
This strait likewise presents another advantage. From
Cape, many suppose that a passage may be made from
thence to the westward, either to the Cape of Good Hope,
or to India; but the fear of the great unknown bight be-
tween the South Cape and the S. W. Cape of Lewen's
Land, lying in about 35° south and 113° east, has hitherto
prevented the trial being made. Now, the strait removes a
should a gale oppose itself to the ship in the first part of the
part of this danger, by presenting a certain place of retreat,
essay: and should the wind come at S. W. she need not
fear making a good stretch to the W. N. W. which course,
if made good, is within a few degrees of going clear of all
There is, besides, King George the Third's Sound, discov
ered by Captain Vancouver, situate in the latitude of 35° 30'
south, and longitude 118° 12' east; and it is to be hoped,
well as the confirmation or futility of the conjecture that a
that a few years will disclose many others upon the coast, as
still larger than Bass Strait dismembers New Holland.'
(p. 192, 193.)

We learn from a note subjoined to this passage, that, in order to verify or refute this conjecture, of the existence of other important inlets on the west coast of New Holland, Captain Flinders has sailed with two ships under his command, and is said to be accompanied by two professional men of considerable ability.

Such are the most important contents of Mr. Collins's book, the style of which we very much approve, because it appears to be written by himself; and we must repeat again, that nothing can be more injurious to the opinion the public will form of the authenticity of a book of this kind, than the suspicion that it has been tricked out and embellished by other hands. Such men, to be sure, have existed as Julius Cæsar, but, in general, a correct and elegant style is hardly attainable by those who have passed their lives in action: and no one has such a pedantic love of good writing, as to prefer mendacious finery to rough and ungrammatical truth. The events which Mr. Collins's book records, we have read with great interest. There is a charm in thus seeing villages, and churches, and farms, rising from a wilderness, where civilized man has never set his foot since the creation of the world The contrast between fertility and barrenness, popu lation and solitude, activity and indolence, fills the mind with the pleasing images of happiness and increase. Man seems to move in his proper sphere while he is thus dedicating the powers of his mind and

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