to long after dark, by the dim light of a cheap tallow-candle. Conceive the hopeless prospect of that dismal drudgery, stretching forward to perpetuity with failing strength. The cases of overtasked classes such as that are neither cheering nor hopeful, and there is much that is perhaps unattainable to be aspired to, beyond constructing "palaces of delight" for the recreation of the people. Yet the working folks and their friends may take comfort from the knowledge that general progress has been steady, and shows no signs of being at a standstill. I close with the figures of the statistician, as I began by quoting him. In 1849 there were 934,000 paupers in England. In 1881, with a doubled population, the number had fallen to 808,000. In Ireland, the reduction had been nearly by five-sixths, but then famines and emigration have depleted the country. In 1831 there were 439,000 depositors in savings-banks, with 14 millions of money. In 1881 there were considerably more than 4 millions of depositors, with 80 millions of money. So, to end as we began, it seems pretty clear that the poor are twice as well off as they were fifty years ago, and it is a very consolatory reflection.

CHAPTER XXVII.

OUR COLONISTS.

THERE

While in

HERE are colonies and colonies, and each takes its character from special productions. that have peopled it or made its fortune. Some seem intended for capitalists living in luxury by commerce, and levying their commissions on the labours of inferior races. In others the life is hard and laborious, but there is health for wealth, with reasonable comforts. those that are perhaps the best adapted to English constitutions, there is room for all, and there are prizes for the fortunate. Personally, we should prefer the last, since existence is sweetened by hopeful excitement. The Canadian Dominion has done well, no doubt; but timber, fish, and grain from distant "fertile belts" mean indefinite endurance with moderate profits. Thanks to the severity of the prolonged winters, only the fittest can survive; and so in the course of time we have a sturdy race, pretty

equally removed alike from poverty and riches. The glorious West Indies have been nearly played out, since the liberation of the slaves and the free trade in sugar. Except in Barbadoes, where the nigger must work or starve, there is little now to tempt the white planter to those Western Islands of the Blessed, with the beauties of a Paradise and the worries of a Purgatory, where he is bullied by the blacks and legislated for by mulattoes. There is much money to be made in Hong-Kong or Singapore, where English merchants levy lucrative percentages on the collection and distribution of Eastern goods; but over the most successful hangs suspended a sword of Damocles, and they are in haste to place their lives and their treasures in safety. At best there is a dash of bitter in the overflowing cup, and chronic liver-complaint is a disagreeable souvenir of the most brilliant course of happy speculation. As for the Cape, except that you have heat for cold, it has much in common with the hard-working Canadas. If the chances of strokes of luck in the diamondfields, and the prospects of crushing fabulous riches out of auriferous quartz-reefs, be set aside, the English adventurer seldom does much with his flocks and herds, his "mealies" and his ostrichfeathers, beyond keeping the wolf of poverty on the howl at a distance from his door.

U

Our Australasian colonies are the most expansive and the most progressive, and in almost every respect the most inviting. The one drawback to emigrating to them seems to be their remoteness, and every year they are being brought nearer to us by inter-oceanic railway communication and accelerated steam - routes. When we look back at their small and unpromising beginnings, their progress is as wonderful as their origin is disreputable. It was only in 1770 that Captain Cook took possession of SouthEastern Australia for the British crown, and in 1788 we utilised Port Jackson by making it a penal settlement for the worst of our convicts. The early associations with crime and its punishment were not of a nature to recommend these countries. Though Cook had taken formal possession of one corner of the insular continent, boundless expanses of the rest were left open to all comers. But no other nation thought it worth while to colonise, where there were neither precious minerals, nor fragrant spice-groves, nor a semi-civilised race of traders, nor any of the recognised short cuts to riches. Baron Hübner points out, in his 'Through the British Empire,' how greatly it was to the credit of British intelligence that it appreciated the sources of wealth in the vast pasturages of Australia. Infant settlements, nursed and fostered by the Government,

gradually came to be expanded by private enterprise. Emancipated convicts were the pioneers of colonial empire, but they were soon supplemented or succeeded by gentlemen of some capital and education. Never in the history of colonisation have there been sharper contrasts in so limited a population. A picked class of settlers were everywhere mixed up with the halfreclaimed scum and dregs of the old country. The cost of the long sea-passage was prohibitory to the honest poor, and at first there was scarcely a place for them. Convict labour sufficed for the drudgery of the settlements. There we had modern chapters of the patriarchal life reproduced from their prototypes in the sacred history. There was a comparatively wealthy aristocracy of squatters, with their flocks and herds grazing in scantily peopled territory. Except that those modern patriarchs lived in stations of shingle, instead of under canvas; when they entertained -which they had frequently occasion to do from the first-they fetched a sheep or a lamb from the flock, exactly like Abraham or Isaac. Like Abraham and Isaac, they had their difficulties with the people of the land, rolling them over like rabbits when they strove with them, with modern firearms. Like Abraham with Lot, they often strove with each other for the springs or pools which made their runs worth occupying.