Thus, in his sore extremity, philosophized poor King Lear; and thus probably felt poor Mr. Darvall. He took the table and the diggers; but the next morning I myself saw him posting down this street as hard as his legs could carry him, from a farewell visit to Vice-Royalty, hack to the vessel that brought him to Melbourne. In a few hours he was steaming from our bay; and, I need hardly say, he never came back. Our whole city, in short, was at that time a sort of fevered, drunken, delirious Pandemonium. In nothing was Melbourne industry then more conspicuously manifested than in its burglarious robberies, "stickings-up," and shootings in every direction. When you dined out in those days, your host, on your leaving his house to return home, kindly placed page 8 a Colt's revolver in your hand, and suggested that you should keep the middle of the street, and that it might not be on the whole impolitic to shoot the first gentleman you met who said, "Mate, can you tell us what's o'clock?" Nevertheless, the greed of gain reconciled us to all these miseries, which, of course, could be but transitory. Lodging, food, police protection, were then the altogether indispensable: the high rents, high prices, and high wages, cured themselves. Capitalists concentrated their efforts on building—market gardeners and farmers found their catlings more profitable than gold-digging, until, as the new supplies of each grew up to, and at last, met the demand, prices came down almost as rapidly as they rose. Meanwhile the rich linds were becoming fewer at the gold-fields; immigration, by reason of our disorganized condition, fell off, and in less than five years from our first gold discovery, everything was changed. A new Melbourne having beeu built, was not required to be built again. St. Kildas, Prahrans, South Yarras, and Emerald Hills, were competing for tenants; market gardeners and farmers were competing for customers, an isans for employers, candidates for policemanships; and rents, as well as prices, fell as rapidly as they rose. I do not say that wages fell, for a sort of imperial ukase has said wages shall not fall; and nature is for the thousand and first, time turned out of doors to come in at the window, as of old. Why do I thus run over this rapid retrospect? Because we can hardly start fair unless we do so. It is well to take stock of our condition—to see what has been done during the last seven or eight years. The Melbourne of 1852, then but a very inferior English town, un-paved, unlighted, muddy, miserable, dangerous, has become transformed into a great city, as comfortable, as elegant, as luxurious (it is hardly an exaggeration to say it), as any place out of London or Paris. Ballarai, Castlemaine, Sandhurst, Kyneton, and other places, have sprung into considerable townships; are lighted by gas, and are alive with the busy hum of men. A beautifully metalled road enatles you now to go in eight or page 9 nine hours to Castlemaine, a journey which, in the year 1852, you could hardly achieve in less than three days, and even then, at the risk, in the winter time, of disappearing in the mud by the way. Our advance, then, is measured by the whole difference between what the colony was in the year 1852, and that which we find it at the present time; and, therefore, he must be very blind, very ignorant, or very perverse, who would aver that we have made no progress; and that, after all these years, we have nothing to show for our gold. And yet, assertions like this we do occasionally meet with among platform orators and newspaper correspondents. Speaking the truth of and to what are called the working classes—as if there were here any class which does not work—is not considered by some people as the surest means of attaining to popularity. However this may be, sure lain that speaking the truth exactly as it is in a man, and as if he were speaking to his own consciousness, must in the long run meet with the approbation of the just and the sensible of all classes. Wise and moderate men will be tolerant of error; and as to the rest, what does it matter what fools or rogues say of you? I propose, therefore, to talk to my audience publicly, in the strictest confidence, about labour, wages, producers, distributors, immigration, free-trade, &c. &c., in the confidence that I shall be listened to with patience, even though you should not agree with my conclusions; as, in any event, discussion and discovery are assisted by mutual toleration. A hiss never settled any truth, nor was political economy ever advanced by cries of "Turn him out," unless the man to be turned out was interrupting the speaker. As everything we eat, drink, and enjoy,—save air and those other things we set for nothing, are the results of labour seconding and wielding the powers of nature, the labour question is always at the base of every discussion of this kind. Nothing is more common than to hear some individual, who rises for the instruction of his fellow-creatures, cry, in reference to all those persons who do not actually handle a chisel, a saw, a plough, or some page 10 other physical tool or implement, "They are drones in the human hive, and throw all Melbourne's thousand merchants into Hobson's Bay, and no one would miss them; but throw an equal number of working men into the same watery grave, and see what you shall see!" Startling this, very; and we usually find stuck against it in the newspapers, "loud cheers." I wonder what the same enlightened cheerers would say to that ingenious man who is reported to have once visited the source of the River Thames, in Gloucestershire, and in an ecstatic sense of supposed mischievous power, clapped his hands upon the springs, exclaiming, "What will they say of this down at Wapping?" Now, what they would say of this down at Wap-pine would be about the measure of what this world at large would say on the sudden deprivation of a few hundreds or even thousands of either her merchants or mechanics. The sun would continue to rise and set, people would go to their work, and come home from it, and men of business would assemble in Collins-street as before. Sure am I, for my own part, that merchants in the main are as useful as mechanics, and mechanics as merchants, or they would not be where they are. But the mechanic sometimes demands of the merchant, "What do you prodace? You are of no use at all, for you produce nothing;." Well, let us follow this a little farther. Strip that mechanic of everything he did not produce himself, and what sort of a figure would he cut? Would his own toilet be one jot more complete than it was when he first came like the rest of us mewling and puling into this world, "to make his mother," as Jeremy Taylor says, "a little glad, and very sorrowful." From head to foot is there one threat' he has made himself? How many animals have lived and died? how many voyages have been made? how many dealings and bargainings, and spinnings and weavings, and tanning and switching, and parkings and unpackings, have all been done before he could be clothed? Are not distributors, then, quite as useful and valuable a class as those called producers? Again, go page 11 from what our mechanic wears to what he eats and drinks. What of these things has he ever produced? Run over all the operations that must occur before he can breakfast off that cheap loaf which is brought to his table. Let him reflect upon his sugar, his tea, his coffee, his butter, his bacon, his beer, perhaps his nobbier. What an infinity of human industries have been in motion and have by some mysterious process come together and converged into that breakfast which he devours, and thinks no more of, for a shilling. What factories are smoking, what steam-engines prying, what storms at sea being battled with, what aching heads over ledgers, what pryings into prices current, what watchings of seasons and of weather, what shipbuildings and shipwrecks, what ingenious implements invented, what vast successes, and as vast failures, what happiness and what despair, are all ceaselessly vexing the surface of the universal globe, in order to keep that mechanic, and all other wearers of clothes and eaters of breakfasts supplied with the necessaries of life, from day to day? Again, turn from our bodily to our intellectual wan's. Man cannot live by broad alone; the diviner part of him needs other aliment. A penny loaf may suffice for his breakfast; but libraries are not more than sufficient to feed his curiosity, and his appetite for inquiry, and speculation, and discussion. Think, then, of the thousands and tens of thousands of authors, from Homer down to Martin Tupper, of copiers, and printers, and papermakers, and booksellers, and newspaper men of all grades and forms of industry, physical and intellectual, kept ceaselessly at work to feed the insatiable brain of man; and, as the result of all these labours, you get a classic for a shilling, and The Times newspaper—that "history of the world for one day"—for fivepence, and the St. Kilda Chronicle for nothing—for they always send me the paper, but never call for the subscription! Miracles are extinct, but these results bear the closest resemblance to a miracle. They are simply the highest developments of the division of labour. The opposite point page 12 to this extremest application of the division of labour principle is exhibited in the situation of Robinson Crusoe upon his uninhabited island. Our working man, with his 40s. or 50s. a week, is, in many respects richer than Julius Caesar in his imperial purple. A man can chip stones, or plane wood, and with his day's wage walk into the next street, and command the industry of the world. For him, as for every one whose labour can bring money, the sun is ever shining, the fruits ever growing the nations ever toiling. He holds up a magic piece of gold, or a bit of particularly dirty paper, and the world rushes towards him with her choicest treasures. Is it better to be this man, or to be compelled, like Robinson Crusoe, to produce with difficulty what others can buy with ease? A sufficiently absurd question surely upon the face of it, and yet it is a question protectionists ought to consider with respect. For the thing called protection must always in its very nature be an approximation more or less to the condition of Robnson Crusoe. Protection, by a plainer and more descriptive name, is compelling A to buy something of B, at a higher price than that for which C can and will sell the same article. B calls it protection. A calls it robbery. B calls it protection, because, he says, if you expose him to the competition of C, he (B) can't live by his business. A calls it robbery, because you force from his pocket, for the benefit of B, the difference between the price at which he (A) can buy of C, and the price at which he (A) must buy of B. Transpose the position of A and C respectively, and each will then call the thing by the name which the other now applies to it. There never was a colony less exposed to foreign competition, more thoroughly enjoying protection, than that of which Robinson Crusoe was the governor, and his man Friday the governed. And what was the state of their pastoral, agricultural, and manufacturing interests? Look at Robinson Crusoe's trousers and cap in the old woodcuts; then turn to some of our colonists rigged in slops from top to toe. Why, Robinson Crusoe in all his glory was not page 13 arrayed as one of these! And yet our slop-dressed colonist—see the evidence and report of the late committee on the tariff question—goes straight from a furious speech in favour of protection to native industry, and invests his 8s. or 10s. in a pair of imported moleskins. In short, he thinks it perfectly proper that everybody else should protect native industry, but he feels no particular necessity for protecting it himself. Hence practice contradicts profession, and the truths of political economy break through cant. It comes round to this wonderful final result, that any and every man who can work at anything for which society has a demand and any and every man who has either saved for himself, or who has succeeded to the savings or possessions of another—has got a certain corresponding power over all the other industries and stored labour (called property) of the rest of the world; and the world is alt the wiser, the richer, and better, by each man just working, when, where, and bow he can, and exchanging the fruits of his labour a and where he thinks best. "Protection," as it appears to me, is merely another name for obtaining money under false pretences by act of Parliament. To hear some protectionists talk, one would think that nobody of any consequence lived in this colony on the import trade. I say nothing here for the merchants, because they are to be thrown into llobson's Bay; but how about the shopkeepers, the porters, the draymen, the innumerable mechanics connected with the shipping interest, the clerks, the domestic servants? Are they all to become shoemakers, tailors, coaehmakers, cabinetmakers, &c, to show us how they "can't do it" at any price others can afford to pay? These are to the initiated but trite considerations; yet they are by many every day either forgotten or ignored. The only pretext for a return to anything like protection is the oft-quoted exceptional case admitted by John Stuart Mill, viz.—where young countries, as fitted as older countries for particular manufactures, are desirous of recovering the start those old countries have obtained, and try to recover page 14 this start by imposing duties upon the foreign product. Even here, the exception admits, if it does not prove the rule; for the protection is to he but temporary, and to cease when the older country is overtaken. If the older country cannot be overtaken, then the protection is mischievous, as being first a throwing away of a certain portion of the industry of the vainly competing country. Even Mr. Mill, however, in the very passage of the work alluded to, seems to forget that in new countries some protection already exists in the very nature of things, in the cost of freight, expenses, &c., of the imported commodity to the new country. Against Mr. John Stuart Mill, on this point, might be quoted his equally celebrated father, James Mill, who never admitted such an exception at all. As for the common talk on this point, I suspect many attendants at meetings haroly know what protection means. "Protection to native industry" has a sentimental sound about it. We all like to be taken care of, and the expression savours of that, so that you have only to start the word "protection" at some meetings, and you catch a large portion of the audience at once, who are for protecting everything and everybody, even to the "unprotected female" made immortal by Punch. But to come from the sentimental to the abstract, to the concrete, are they for giving 35s. a pair for Melbourne-made shoes, inferion to the best imported at £1? Protection, to be worth the name, must come to something like that, or it is no protection at all. Now, who are those who so loudly demand this protection? Skilled mechanics: a very valuable class in any community, it cannot be denied. They cannot, or will not, dig for gold; they cannot turn to tillage; they are unable to offer anything to society as the purchasing power of the necessaries of life, save their skilled labour. The farmer, getting only £G or £7 for a ton of hay, says to the shoemaker, "I could not, even if I would, give you 35s. for a pair of colonial-made shoes when I can get a pair from Paris or Northampton at 20s." The shoemaker must either undersell the importer, or turn to some- page 15 thing else, or leave the colony. Perhaps he takes the last course, in which case a good artizan is lost to our society. Still, is_ this, or any number of such instances as this, sufficient ground for our abandoning the principles of free trade as at present prevailing in the Australian colonies? Are all boot-wearers in the colony to pay this 40s. as the price of keeping the superfluous bootmakers here? Yes, says the bootmaker No, says the boot-wearer. On which side lies the prosperity of the genera] colony? Endeavouring to ascer ain this, let us try the matter a little farther. Imagine general protection to shoemakers, tailors, coachmakers, even farmers, and all in like case with the instance put of the immigrant shoemaker. At once the cost of living would, to the whole of us, be increased by some 100 or 150 per cent., so far as such cost related to the taxed or the protected articles. Whence is this increased price to come? From the gold-digger? Can we expect it? He gets, and can only yet, the market price of the world for his gold, but he would have to exchange the fruits of his labour, not at the market price of the world, but at the artificially raised market-price of the colony of Victoria, for his boots, cloth, tools, &c. The storekeeper, the professional man, the agriculturist, the sheep farmer, the official man, would be in the same position. What would be the first and immediate consequence of the change? A vast number of miners would at once be thrown out of employment, for already, as we are told, they are only making on an average wages sufficient to support them at their work. If the enhanced price were paid at all, it would only be by miners working harder, and procuring more gold. But, if the miner could not pay, he must leave the colony or turn to something else If the official man, the storekeeper, the agriculturist cannot pay—they must all either leave the colony or turn to something else. Many, in this turning to something else, would, of course, turn to the protected trades. This would increase competition among them, and in time reduce the prices of their goods, but page 16 not to the import prices without duty, or in such case the protection would be superfluous. Meanwhile, it seems certain that a large number of people, especially from among those belonging to the unprotected trades, would be obliged to leave the colony, unable to subsist here. Industry of one kind would thus be forced into artificial channels, whilst industry of another kind would be forced out of the colony altogether. These seem to be inevitable evils, and they are of a very grave character, for labour, like water, left to itself, finds its level, and any artificial damming; up of it in any country, new or old, only prevents it from going where the common wants could employ it to the greatest advantage. Under either set of conditions, therefore—viz., under those of free trade, as under those of protection—a certain number of per sons are always leaving, and will always leave every country, for want of employment fitted to their powers. England, we are often told, has fought her way to pre-eminence among the nations, under a system of protection. Partly true. And Mr. Thomas Sayers, the other day, disabled of his right arm, fought for two hours very gallantly with his left, and really might have beaten Mr, Hcenan had the affair gone on. And, therefore, let every nation that would thrash its Hcenan, begin by crippling commerce of its right arm, which is liberty. But we should keep the money in the country, we are told. Why keep the money in the country? As if money were of any use at all, except as an instrument of exchange. But that the depression we complain of cannot arise from our sending money out of the country for goods, is seen in this—that money is still rapidly accumulating in the banks. Curious contradiction—deposits lying in banks, unused by the depositors, and yet an universal outcry of the scarcity of money, and an almost stagnation of those building and other operations which can only be carried on with money. Well, a very little observation, and reflection upon things in general, will soon clear up this apparent contradiction. In the first place, immigration has al- page 9 most ceased. No great demand, therefore, now exists for houses. I mentioned, a while ago, that house-rent had fallen several hundred per cent. Mouses which, in every part of Melbourne and the suburbs, were in 1854 let at £300 and £600 a year each, may now be had for £100 or £120. Very respectable cottages, such as we usually find in the occupation of artisans and others of the community called labouring classes, are easily procurable at £20 or £25 a year. What inducement, then, have capitalists to build if they can only build at such cost as to exclude anything like the possibility of their obtaining interest upon their outlay? Capitalists in these colonies, we all know, look for and usually obtain 10 per cent, for their money. But a great Melbourne capitalist, one who has perhaps expended as much money among the building trades as any man in Victoria, told me the other day that he cannot build now—looking at wages in the one direction, and at reduced rentals in the other—so as to secure 5 per cent, for his money, even were houses to remain continuously tenanted, and though they were never to require reparation. The consequence of this is, that no one now builds who can avoid it. Nor, as I conceive, would even the lowering of wages produce in itself more than a temporary alleviation of this state of things. Any impulse which reduced wages could communicate to building would be merely transitory. In a population so slowly increasing as ours at present, the supply of house accommodation soon overtakes the demand, and when that point is attained expect to hear cries of depression of the building trades. But when that depression comes, in other words, when society has got as much house accommodation as it wants, 1 apprehend that, unless nature's laws are to be reversed, unless she is to contradict herself for the special benefit of the suffering handicrafts, wages must full. Remember, I am no advocate for low wages; I merely give simple and articulate expression to nature's silent and inexorable operations. I would far sooner see wages very high than very low; for I am certain it would be far page 18 better for me, even selfishly considered. But how can I, how can any ordinarily reflecting man, walk about the streets of Melbourne, and fail to see that wages must come down, together with rentals and profits, and income generally. Ponder upon the announcement of that restaurant-keeper in Swanston-street, whose attractive board I pass almost every morning—I do not give his name, lest it should be supposed that I wish to push that gentleman's trade at the expense of the many other similar establishments in the city equally good, and equally cheap—ponder, I say, on this board on which the proprietor sets forth that you can have a plate of meat and vegetables, and another of pudding, all for one shilling. Nola bene—no extra charge for change of plate! How can we get that excellent and substantial dinner for a shilling, but that all the articles of which it is composed are at such a price that the restaurant-keeper can carry on his business on these terms, and yet get a living profit by his trade? Follow up his business into the related industries with which he deals; consider his now reduced (perhaps not sufficiently reduced) rent, his cheap apparel, his cheap vegetables, his not very dear (although, in a country like this, not yet sufficiently cheap) beef and mutton; consider all these cheap things—these cheap results of colonial industry for the last seven or eight years and then tell me whence is this restaurant-keeper, and the people with whom he deals, market-gardeners and others, whence are they to get the money with which to pay labour—"10s a day, and nothing less?" You cannot get blood out of a stone; you will not find capitalists undertaking any enterprise by which they are to lose, and not to gain. All interests, therefore, both of capital and labour, depending interchangeably upon each other, will always correct and adjust each other. Strikes, therefore, must almost always he either superfluous or unavailing—superfluous where, as in 1854, masons got 30s. a day, because society couldn't get such labour at that time for less; unavailing now, because society is not particularly in want of such page 19 labour, even at a third of the former price. Nor is the reduction of wages an unmixed evil—if evil at all—to the mason himself. He can command almost as many of the necessaries and luxuries of life now with 10 or 12 shillings a day as formerly he could command with the larger sum; and he possesses this equally large command, with the apparently smaller means, simply because everybody else is obliged to submit to a smaller money compensation for the goods in which he deals. How, then, can any particular tradesman, who thinks at all, expect to benefit by reduced prices, and yet escape himself? To expect such things is to expect incongruities, pelf-contradictions, impossibilities. It is to exsect other men to work for us without our working; for them. It is to demand that something shall come out of nothing—that wages shall be paid, which no returns can produce; and if all sections of workers demanded the same thing as against each other, society would be little better than a large lunatic asylum, where each resident fancies every body else mad but himself. What, then, is to be done under these unpleasant circumstances? Well, I conceive things must be left, in a large measure, to those internal sources of healing—the vis medicatrix nature which society contains within itself. Depression precedes prosperity, and prosperity provokes speculation, and speculation leads about again to depression, with as regular an alternative as day and night, and night and morning Such a state of things is not peculiar to Australia. It is the same England—it is the same in America—it is the same in all great commercial countries. Talk to people who lived in the United States in the year 1338, and they will tell you that, when selling off their goods and chattels at that time, prices were little more than nominal, for want of money. Lists of "wild eat" banks were kept handy in every store and counting-house, that men might judge as safely as possible whose paper money to take and whose to reject. That was a collapse, following immediately upon previous universal speculations page 20 upon credits, just of the very same character as that we are suffering under at the present time. The fever and ague of trade seems to be the same all over the world. Can nothing, then, be done for the patient? Has the politico-economical pharmacopoeia no medicine for so stubborn and prolonged a complaint? Yes. Art and treatment may do something—perhaps much, but certainly not all. We can second nature, not control her. What, then, is to bedone? Why, cries everyone, "Give everybody something more to do "Finds fresh customers!" cry all, from the shopkeeper, listless, and almost hopeless, over his wares, to the artificer, whose tools are idle in his basket. Fresh customers! Most willingly, but where are they to come from? From natural increase of our present population? Hardly so. Head the Rev. Mr. Malthus's book on the principle of population—the book of a very wise, a very amiable, a very much abused, and certainly not a too well understood man. He will show you that, under the most favourable circumstances, you may double your population, from within, in some 15 or 20 years. Will you wait so long for your new customers? Where shall they come from then but from across the seas? What! immigration? Ay, Immigration! What! import fresh labour at the cost of the present labourers, to contend with these latter? Here is a question which, I observe, easily brines down a cheer at many public meetings; and, for certain, I am not going to treat with any light spirit of ridicule, or with any other than very serious and respectful consideration, those cheers. Say they are not the cheers of the enlightened,-are those workmen the only people who have not been sound political economists, in matters touching their own labour? Have British merchants, and manufacturers, and statesmen, never been at fault on such subjects as free trade, and international tariffs, and employment of machinery? And cannot we be reasonably considerate to these cheers, when we reflect upon the indisputable fact that a working-man's labour is of as much importance to him as is a nobleman's estate to the nobleman? Bach has but his present page 21 means of livelihood, and each may surely be allowed to feel deeply, and express himself strongly, on any proposition the effect of which may be to bring him (as he thinks) nearer to starvation. Well, then, I am not in the least put out by the anti-immigration cheers. I ask only for a hearing. I protest that if the cheerers can confute me, I shall be as well pleased as if they were to admit that I had convinced them; for, as I have said, my only object is truth. We come back, then, to that word immigration. Are we to raise from the working-man taxes wherewith to introduce competitors with the working-man's labour? That is the shape in which the question is usually put. I answer, "No." But is that the fair way of putting the question? Does no fallacy lurk in the premises? Is nothing assumed which ought not to be assumed? Tax the working-man, to find competition with himself! Is it a tax? If I pay a £100 for a hundred acres of land, how is that a tax upon the working-man? The payment for that land does not come out of his pocket, but out of the pocket of the purchaser. The more land you sell, the more you increase the demand for labour. And if you are artificially to increase the demand for labour, why not with the very same funda with which you have increased the demand for it, also increase the supply? The whole process being an artificial one, what does the working-man propose to do with the proceeds of the land sales, assuming that no portion thereof is to be devoted to immigration? "Oh, put it into public works," says he; "find us something to do." Ay, but then we have to hear the other side. We turn to the land purchaser. We say to him, "What do you say to the public works nostrum?" "Well," he says, "why am I to buy land, and pay for it, in order that this colony is to be kept as a preserve for the annual erection and construction of public works, more especially now that there is almost no public to call for any additional works of the sort?" It seems to me, then, to come back to this, that if I buy merely a £100 worth of the page 22 public estate, the public have a right to expend that £100 as they please. If they import four or five artizans, or agricultural labourers, with the money, does it necessarily follow that those labourers on their arrival in the colony enter into injurious competation with the labourers already here? Surely no, although frequently the labouring-classes seem to have arrived at different conclusions. They forget that every man is a consumer, as well as a producer; that every man in proportion to his command over the industry of all other workers, is a customer of those other workers. The newly-arrived miner, mason, or shoemaker, may seem to be more or less a fresh candidate for those fields of exertion [unclear: theretofore] the monopoly of the men already assembled on them, but, in fact, he benefits others as much as himself. He buys their labour with his—they sell their labour for his—each enhances the comforts of the others, and that which seems, at a first glance, to be competition, is, in fact, co-operation, when more attentively regarded. Let any man cast back his memory along the last nine years. Has he ever known low wages during a period of extensive immigration? Were wages ever so high in this colony as during the years 1852, 1853, and 1854? And yet, was it not during those years that the immigration tide as running most strongly towards these shores? Granted that the gold-fields took much of this labour, yet the main cause of wages keeping up lay in the fact that, whether working on the sold-fields, on farms, or in houses, the Importation of labourers was an impanation of the demand for labours; capital, the savings of labour, grew with that labour; this capital, as fresh labour continued to pour into the colony, of course employed more labour, and so, each producing and promoting the other, the colony advanced in prosperity. Immigration has stopped; the working-men are now freed from imported competition; and yet have there ever been such lusty cries of want of work as now? Surely these things cannot be without their own significance for all! Prom the above observations it will be apparent enough, I think, page 23 that our circumstances now call for a resumption of immigration; not paid for by the working-man, but paid for by capital. If there be no error in the above conclusions, it seems clear that the effect of assisted immigration is this: that we sell our land, and with the proceeds buy customers of, as well as competitors with, the working-man and, judging by results, such are the mysterious but certain advantages of division of labour, that the new arrival is mere valuable as a customer, to those already arrived, than ho is injurious to them as a competitor. And I am glad that this is so. It takes the last rag of an excuse from men who, having got to this colony, would shut the door in the face of those suffering millions who are struggling with the direst forms of poverty at home. The inexorable law by which, in all countries, population must at some time or other press upon subsistence, compels colonization; and is there any selfishness more depraved or inhuman than that which would confine our fellow creatures in a position of pain and struggle from which we have thought fit to escape ourselves? But is there nothing more to be done than to restore immigration? Yes, certainly. Of what use will immigration be if, as hitherto, it flows through this colony as water through a sieve? We must, if possible, fix people here when we get them. The great earth-hunger of man, as some German writer has called it, must be satisfied. In plain English, all the facilities legislation can provide should be furnished for enabling every man to till the soil who desires to do so. But he may ruin himself! Let him. Free-trade in ruin as in everything else. Doubtless men sometimes, nay very frequently if you like, err in the choice of a profession. But it is certain, as a general rule, the State cannot (even if it were a function of the State, which it is not) take better care of men than men can take care of themselves. Let every man, then, who likes it, go into farming at once. Put things at the worst, and suppose your farmer does become insolvent, rural insolvency is pleasanter than Little Bourke- page 24 street insolvency. A man never seems to me so happy as when surrounded by his stacks, his pigs, his kine, his growing crops, his children tumbling amidst the straw, or laughing among the vines. If there be perfect and serene enjoyment, surely it is here. All farm scenes equally conduce to happiness and peace of mind; and, therefore, no wonder that the majority of immigrants harbour the notion of at some time or other going upon the land. This earth-hunger all thoughtful statesmen, as I think, will, in new Countries, wisely satisfy; and do not fear that free society will incur more evils in this direction of human industry than free society can correct and cure; especially now that the last great discoveries of Stuart have practically enlarged the habitable globe, by adding to it a fair and green central land, which so lately we had condemned as an arid desert. Do not be alarmed. I am not going to talk Land Bill, any further than it immediately bears upon my larger subject. We have all been pretty well bored to death' with the ceaseless babblement about "lot." and "limited auction," and unlimited desire to settle the poor man on the lands. I know it has pretty nearly settled me in the land. Fearful, however, as this subject has now become, I desire to remark upon what appears to me to be one or two errors. Those who talk about getting the utmost for the public estate, as it is called, seem to assume that the state, in selling land, is to be regarded merely as you regard a private vendor. If you do this, surely you confound two essentially different things. The object of the state is to settle the country; the object of the private vendor is to get as much for his land as possible. The end which the private vendor has, constitutes merely the means with which the state works towards further end. But why, it has been said, should the state be deprived of that difference which A may make by reselling to B, and which difference the state might have made in the first instance, had the land been sold by open competition? Is it unreasonable to answer that the state is not a land jobber? that it finds its account as much, or page 25 more, in getting people on the land as in getting money for the land in the first instance? that the state, having discharged its duty as a vendor, commences another function as a tax-gatherer—your cultivator becoming at once a consumer of some or all of those dutiable goods which yield the great bulk of our large revenue? The country becomes opened up; roads and bridges are formed and built; the wilderness is subdued to the uses of man; the colony grows. Then, just as the blood circulates through the human frame, labour, unimpeded on any side, flows in every direction throughout the length and breadth of the land, instead of being dammed up and confined, as too frequently it now is, in little local congestions—over-supply in one spot, and deficiency of hands in another, at one and the same time. Look, again, at the secondary evil consequences of doling out land screwed up to the highest price for agriculture, and granting principalities at a merely nominal rent for pasturage. You offend that abstract sense of justice which, more or less, is found among all men; you force upon us the conviction that there is a privileged and petted class among us. Impatient people ask, why should a sheep farmer enjoy miles upon miles of land, at little more than a nominal rent, whilst the agriculturist cannot hold the smallest farm upon any such terms? I have no desire to stir up class against class, but whilst such a state of things as this exists, no Convention, no Eastern Market is required to effect such an object—jealousy and antagonism grow and strengthen of themselves. It has been frequently supposed, and at times with some appearance of foundation for the supposition, that it is of the essence of the democratic spirit in this country, as in others, to hate wealth, and to pul! down capital into the dust. Sometimes, perhaps, this low and unworthy spirit may be met with; but is it not equally probable that this supposed hatred is frequently rather apparent than real? and is there not, at the least, something curiously anomalous in men hating what they are every hour striving to become—namely, rich men. However this may be, I must yet admit, looking page 26 dispassionately at the subject, that if the squatters have evinced some selfishness on the one hand, squatters' opponen's have sometimes exhibited unreason on the Other. After all, it is merely human that men who are, as they profess to believe, lawfully entitled to great advantages, should desire to retain them; but it is also natural, as well as just, that the public should desire to make the squatter pay a just rent for the lands he enjoys. Cannot both these objects be achieved without oppression, illegality, or injustice in any direction? I think they can; and I think also these objects can be achieved with vast advantage to the general productiveness and prosperity of the whole country. This is a subject not to he settled by the extremely short and neat prescription sometimes proposed 10 us of "driving the squatters across the Murray." "Driving the squatters across the Murray" might be driving our dinners across the Murray, and, put in that shape, requires to be reconsidered. One vast evil connected with this interest at present stares us in the face. From the uncertainty of the squatting tenure, all the runs throughout the country necessarily remain in an unimproved state. Who will trouble himself to dig wells, construct reservoirs for water, or even be at the expense of making two blades of grass grow where one grew before, unless he has a reasonable assurance that he shall reap where he has sown? Whilst the squatter is liable to be turned out at a moment's notice, without compensation for improvements, he has of course no motive to improve, and, consequently, a great part of Australia is, in a mitigated form, in much the same situation as was Ireland, between mortgagors and mortigagees, before the passing of the Encumbered Estates Act. The land at home had ceased to be the property of the mortgagor, and he was consequently indifferent and without hope. The land had not become absolutely the mortgagee's, and therefore he had not the deep interest the property we observe in ordinary owners. The problem therefore was, to educe out of this chaos of split up interests and indifferentisms the beneficial management of the land by those of page 27 whom it should be the exclusive property. That problem was solved successfully by that most practical, as well as scientific statesman, Sir Robert reel. Surely there are no specialties in our case which make it a more embarrassing one than the Irish difficulty. Apart from faction, jealousy, and wrong-headedness, the rationale of the matter seems to lie in a nutshell. I presume very few persons who really have any practical acquaintance with this country, will dispute that many of these lands are only fit for pastoral purposes. Nature has passed an eternal sentence of sterility upon them. Are these lands not to be turned to the best account? Can they be turned to the best account, unless you give individuals an exclusive interest in them? Can you give this interest effectually, unless you say that whatsoever the squatter lays out on his squattage, shall be secured to himself, as you protect any other person in the enjoyment of the fruits of his industry? (Jan you thus secure the squatter, unless you say he shall enjoy his lease, or compensation in some shape, if he be deprived of it? No. I say then, that in the future administration of these merely pastoral lands—whether they be under the state or under rural municipalities—that at the same time you secure to the public an adequate rental, and the right of re-entry at any time on equitable terms for sale, you must secure to the sheep farmer, as he will then be called (a new nomenclature marking the new era), the thing, or its equivalent, for which he has bargained, and thenceforth squatter and anti-squatter heartburnings will cease; pastoral lands will be improved like other lands, their leases assignable like other leases, artesian wells would be sunk, artificial grasses laid down, paddocks fenced in, reservoirs formed, homesteads established, a vastly additional demand for labour would spring up throughout all these grazing farms in connexion with the improvements going on in them, and beef and mutton, as in the olden time of the colony, would again be 3d. a pound to all of us. Sooner or later, such lands would have to be thus dealt with had squatters and Orders in Council never been heard page 28 of. It is simply a question of turning your property to the best account. Under the present no-system the squatter is the only party who profits by it. He gains exactly what the public loses. What is that? The difference between the nominal rent he pays and the fair and substantial rent he ought to pay, and which (as he says) he is, under an equtable system, willing to pay, Sixteen thousand sheep, with run on the Muray, lately cost £24,900. This is at the rate of 31s. a head. For any excess or deficiency in number delivered, allowance, at the rate of 12s. a head was to be made by either side to the other. The difference, therefore, between the 12s. and the 31s. respectively, represents the value of the rum, as settled in the sincerest manner between the vendor and the vendee, and amounting to something above £15,000. Now, I would not rack-rent the squatter with a 10 per cent, rental on the above amount; but, something reasonable, let us say, on the grazing capabilities of each run. Let us never be oppressive; but, bearing in mind old Isaac Walton's recommendation of tenderness even to the worm, let us put the hook into the squatter "as if we loved him." But I sometimes read in the journals reports of public meeting speeches, from which I gather that the Legislature dare not meddle with the squatters, for that the banks have got, them, and that the banks are all powerful. This is startling, and, moreover, rather inconsistent with other and just-referred-to descriptions of squatters by the same denouncers. One while, the squatter, with greedy maw, is swallowing everybody else; at another moment, the squatter is being swallowed—himself, a fat and sleek deer, gradually going down the capacious throat of a banking boa-constrictor; so that, upon this pleasant theory, there would appear to be but "one way" for us all. Awed, then, by these awful banks, and sharing only the common reverence for plate-glass, and splendid mahogany, and brass rails, and the mysteries of the parlour, does my friend, therefore, who the other day said to me, in Queen-street, "I hope, in that lecture of yours, page 29 you are going to touch up the banks," think that I am going to do or attempt anything of the kind? What would the banks care for my touching up—they who can touch up everybody? Besides, who so presumptuous as to say that he really knows anything distinct about those great, sublime, moneyed mysteries? Who, save Joseph Macardy, who offers himself as a special Providence to take care of everybody's money, from £1 upwards—who save he knows anything about these greatly reverenced establishments? Who but Joseph knows anything about their assets, their liabilities, their profits, out of what capital made, by what precise business, and under what circumstances? Why am I to be called upon to show my ignorance as to the manner or decree in which the interests of the colony are affected by these full moons, which some superstitious people regard as influencing all the moneyed tides in the affairs of men? Why should I vainly attempt to understand how people can discount at 10 per cent., and divide 20 per cent, dividends? I may have dim visions of overtrading, and so on; but I fly the subject, and leave it to the next edtion of Joseph Macardy's pamphlet. Yet, even in flying the subject, may I not ask why that million's worth of debentures of the Melbourne issue has not yet seen the light, according to the act in that case made and provided? Of a verity, many a poor servant and small capitalist would be glad to buy a £30, or £50, or £100 debenture, carrying every hour on its back 6 per cent, interest, rather than holding a bank note of the same amount, bearing no interest at all. And this brings me to a subject to which the Legislature itself at some time may come—I mean to the consideration of founding in this colony a truly national bank, where the state will be, as it ought to be, the only maker of paper money among us, as a legal tender; when the state will have, as it ought to have, the whole profit derivable from any credit that state may have in the world; when that very profit may be turned into the means of paying the interest of our debentures, or into public works, rather than being left to any number of people who page 30 choose to join together, subscribe their deposits, apply for an act, call themselves a bank, and forthwith commence the Royal prerogative of making money. The Haines-cum-Childers Ministry proposed such a measure as a national bank (now some five years back). The Haines Ministry went out; Mr. Childers went home; and the idea became smothered in the land question. But the idea is not dead. Look into Mr, Ricardo's Works, and you will find ably and distinctly sketched his idea of a national bank, in which the state should have the profit of the banking operations. Such an establishment, I have been informed, once existed in New Zealand, and was only discontinued—so I have been told by experienced New Zealand settlers—because the revenue and the transactions were not large enough to make it worth while to continue the institution. With a revenue like ours, however, of £3,000,000 a-year, with deposits like ours of ££,000,000 a-year, it seems scarcely necessary that we should henceforth be dependent on English capitalists, working in large measure with colonial moneys. I have revived the idea; let others work it out to practical issues. Time admonishes me that I must hasten to a close. Have I said all that I have to say about the depression" Well, nearly, but not quite. It seems to me that great public disasters frequently contain the seeds of still greater public benefits, and hat even depressions, crises, and commercial revulsions have their uses. They set men thinking, devising, casting about for modes of escape; to giving practical effect to new and valuable thoughts; to developing resources of the colony, the thought of which may not have occurred to prosperous, and contented, and uninquiring minds. "Sweet are the uses of adversity." Now that we have millions of sheep in the colony, no one thinks of bestowing any special gloryon old John Macarthur for first introducing the merino sheep; and yet he was an original man, a genius, a brave, self-dependent man in his way. His son, too, the major-general, who has so lately left us, what has he not done for our wine trade? Many years ago, he went himself page 31 to Germany, distributed pamphlets in English and German, explained the capabilities of the colony for the cultivation of the vine, and for wine-making; engaged vignerons, put them on board ship, got into trouble—he told me so himself—on a charge of kidnapping the Germans to this fearful country; and yet he has never published these things; but should he ever read tie account of them in any history of the colony, he would blush to find them fame. The great depression of 1843 and 1844 set the Messrs. O'Brien, of Yass, boiling their sheep—at that time mere woolly vermin—for their tallow. Thus, a fat sheep was found convertible into a five-and-threepenny export. This was a discovery at the time, and acknowledged and appreciated as such, and it was a discovery the result of deep and general distress taxing men's inventions. In like manner, coming nearer home, a short time back a very gentlemanly man—one with whom many in this room are well acquainted—stopped me at the corner of Collins and Queen streets, and said he had understood I was much interested in the development of our resources; and receiving for answer that I was so, he proceeded to say that he had discovered one, that he had is about him, and could at once submit it to my consideration. I was interested, as you may 6uppose, and so must you be. We have read a great deal lately about Australian gems. So perhaps your imaginations are already scampering off into the regions of mineralogy or geology. Was it a diamond? No. Perhaps an aquamarine, topaz, or a ruby, or an emerald? Not at all. You give it up? Well, then, he drew it from his coat-pocket with a solemnity I cannot describe, and it was, what? A sausage!'—a short, red, regular, orthodox, unmistakable saveloy! Before I had recovered from my surprise he said, "Taste that, and tell me what you think of it." Well, I hesitated; because, although I like Sausages, I have a prejudice (perhaps a weak, and finicking, and unfounded prejudice) against sausages being carried about in people's pockets. In an instant, however, I saw that his enthusiasm gnored all such despicable weaknesses, and, evi- page 32 dently quite unapprehensive of the cause of my confusion, he pressed the article upon me. I took a cautious and critical nibble. "Now," he said, "what will you say to it?" "Well," I answered, "I have tasted worse sausages than that." "I should say so;" said he, "but what will you think, my dear sir, when I tell you that the whole of that sausage is made out of kangaroo?" "Well," I said, "I could believe it." "I am going," he said, "to apply to the Solicitor-General for a patent, for 1 believe the idea is thoroughly new." I said I think so, too. He carefully re wrapped the saveloy in paper, re-dropped it into its appointed receptacle, and strode away with an air that delighted me. He did not seem so much to think of any profit derivable from this preparation, as of the fact that he was carrying a portion of the salvation of the colony in his pocket, society all unconscious of the millennium impending: We may laugh a this; but is not the great city of Bologna itself better known to the great British mind by Boloyna's celebrated sausages than by her fountains, her colossal sattues, her pic are-galleries, her museums and cabinets of art, her Cardinal Mczzofantis, her public libraries, or by being the birthplace of one of the greatest orators of our day—Father Gavazzi. On these occasions, perhaps, we may feel half disposed to despise the sausage, but we are at times glad enough to eat it for all that. I maintain that my gentlemanly friend's idea is good. It is another, and a worthy attempt, to give by transformation exchangeable value to that which is at present comparatively valueless; many things are yet to be grown and produced in this country, and profitably exported, which down to the present time have never been even thought of. For we are little better than Chinese copyists after all. Be it hats, crinoline, peg-tops, houses, or the growing of wheat and oats, what they do and wear at home we do and wear here. There are stony and arid bits of country in this Victoria on which a sheep would starve, but on which an Angora goat would thrive, and bring profit to the owner. The bad times will bring page 33 the goats, the wine, the olive, the cotton, the silk, the sausages, the dried fruits, and other good things in due season. But if great depressions work such good results on men's outward circumstances, how much more do they improve man himself? How ameliorate his moral nature? How soften the havd merchant into the melting philanthropist, how make his heart, like that of the ancient manner, overflow with emotion, and "bless us unawares." Look at that speech of Mr. Sichel, as reported in The Argus of the 8th of September last, on the universally interesting subject of the provision trade! We always knew him as one of the clearest of intellects; we now know him as one of the most benevolent of men. I have ere now been moved by the "reason (as Maeaulay finely describes it) penetrated, and made red-hot, by passion," in the De Coronâ, of Demosthenes; I have read Cicero's fine invectives against Cataline, and Plunkett's celebrated knocking at the door; but never have I been more moved than by Mr. Sichel on the minor morals of merchants—what they are,'and what they ought to be—touching the provision trade. "If anything goes wrong" says he," in Bass's beer, Sinclair's hams, or Gould's butter, who is there, or what means exist here, to provide a remedy" "Oh, cursed spite,—he seems to say,—that I should ever be born to set them right." "We should act together," says he, "not pull against each other; and should endeavour to put an end to the many paltry motives, envy, malice, and spite, which it cannot be denied exist among us. If, on the contrary, we see each other often, and are thrown more together day by day, we shall soon come to act with more unanimity, and more profitably to our common interests. Instead of this, we are accustomed to a selfish manner of conducting business, each reckoning his own advantage more than that of the general body. Not one of us," says he "is at the bottom of what goes on in Bass's beer, Sinclair's hams, or Gould's butter," &c. Now, Mr. S. P. Lord indorsed every word of these self-denying senti- page 34 ments, and they passed nem. con. How delightful is this! Henceforth we may look for a little more public spirit among the merchants. Henceforth we may find them standing more frequently for the Legislature, and thereby acknowledging that they have duies to the country as well as towards each other. Henceforth, at any rate, the Chamber of Commerce will be a sort of commercial Agapemone, or mercantile abode of love. Suitings of invoices and secrets in prices current shall he no more. Every man who knows anything by which he may profit shall henceforth proclaim it, with a loud voice, upon 'Change. Dennisroun Brothers shall be Everybody's Brothers, and shall be seen in every direction pouring oil hvo all sorts of wounds. Litigation shall be at an end, and rows of alms-houses, for the lawyers, shall be erected; and His Excellency shall lay the first stone, and congratulate the audience upon the present lecturer being the first recipient of the new bounty. My feelings overcome me, and I must close the picture. Do not imagine that, because I have been drawn off to a somewhat romping digression I have forgotten our situation. If I have shown more levity in the course of this lecture than some people may think becoming amongst a ruined people, pray consider it is because I, for one, do not consider we are ruined at all. Like the gentleman who had seen too many ghosts himself to be able to believe in them, so I have seen the colony ruined too many times to believe is going to be ruined now. That there is distress amongst us there can he no doubt. In all periods of transition in every country there must ever be more or less of distress—distress even occasionally among industrious, provident, and worthy families. Such cases, perhaps, we have all known. But I believe the greatest outcry about the shorteomings of the colony proceeds not from this class at all. Unfortunately, every new country has in it large numbers of waifs and strays of humanity, unfitted for any mortal pursuit—a vague, listless, hoping, waiting class, always talking, never doing, save for a few hours together, and whoso fate you have never page 35 any difficulty in foretelling. These sink down and succumb here, as they would anywhere else. But for those who can apply their hands or their bends to the work to be done, what is really the matter? Depression! Commercial crisis for-sooh! What's a commercial crisis, compared with a cannon ball crisis? We have heard enough, and to spare it is true, about New Caledonia, and about French fleets in Hobson's Bay. Let them come; I believe in Old Caledonia, and in Old England, and in "[unclear: ould]" Ireland, and also in our volunteers, as right, earnest, six o'clock in the morning; follows, who mean in. But just imagine for a moment that such a fleet were here, and that a strong detachment of French marines had caught our seven bank managers, and clapped them into a chainpang, and got them all on board ship as hostages for a good rattling ransom! Here's something like a crisis if you like. What was the imprisonment of the seven bishops, about which history makes so much fuss, compared with this cooping up of our seven bankers? Imagine them, if you can, looVingover the bulwarks of some "tall admiral," and pining for their parlours. This is the ludicrous side of war, and we laugh; and, strange to say, laugh er and tears are never more sincere than when they are close to each other. For, whilst constresting more distresses of peace with the horrors of war, other and awful comparisons with our own present happy condition press upon the memory. Was not Palermo bombarded the other day, and were not wives, and mothers, and little children, slaughtered among the husbands, and the sons, and the fathers? Look at Taranaki's misery at our very door. Think of the fired homesteads, the dispersed and ruined households, the hopes and labours of years of patient toil annihilated in an instant among a people who, the other day, deemed themselves as secure as we consider ourselves now. Do we sufficiently and habitually consider, then, the advantages we actually enjoy? Health, food, warmth, light, liberty, some leisure for reading, for thought, and recreation;—are these possessions nothing? Are they not, indeed, all, so far page 36 as this mere sublunary life is concerned? I are not preaching any impossible philosophy, or any anti-colonial degree of abstinence and self-mortification. I merely mean to say, that there is nothing like looking resolutely at the better side of every situation, and being thankful to God that things are no worse. It is certain that as man is at present constituted he cannot even properly taste pleasure, without having first known pain. We most of us command more than the people of many other countries enjoy, and as much as unsophisticated man really wants; and if at times and seasons—and such times and seasons come to us all—we find ourselves unable to live up to our own doctrine, and that we are yet querulously repining under those losses, and crosses, and petty griefs and disasters, which have power over the strongest as over the weakest, let us still thankfully bear in mind that-as the wisest and most benignant of human spirits has said,—

"This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pigeants than the scene
Wherein we play in."