monkey public that gains to the same amount. What they took, was their own gain; whether any body lost it or not, is what nobody can tell. And this leads to the real explanation, which is, that the very individuals who stickle for the right of taking from their neighbours, pay their quota in the end. It may not be positively certain, that they each without exception individually lose as much as they gain; but it is plain that this must be the case with by far the greatest part. It is a fallacy, that demands of Mr. Huskisson to prove, that each particular interest' to whose depredations he puts an end, is bettered by the process. If it is so, it is so much the better; and there is no doubt that it will happen in many cases. still the proposition started with is not, that each of the pilferers will necessarily be the better, but that somebody else will be the better. The proposition is, that there is no general policy in pilfering. There may have been some of prodigious pouches, who contrived to be the gainers after all. But the proposition is, that for that very reason, they ought to be taken by the throat till they disgorge.

But

But as before, it is necessary to skip and go on. There cannot be fifty people in the country, incapable of carrying the monkey parallel through all that may be omitted.

"The grand principle of genuine political economy is--National wealth and prosperity flow from the good profits and wages of the individual; therefore give these to the greatest number. That of the savage counterfeit you follow is in reality-National wealth and prosperity flow from the bad profits or wages of the individual; therefore give loss and hunger to the greatest number. Could any thing be conceived more preposterous, than to attempt to produce general wealth and prosperity by making every business a losing and starving one? and yet this is precisely what you are doing.'-p. 115.

The obligation of the country to the defenders of abuse is infinite, for coming down from the high stilts of imagination and eloquence, and condescending to fight upon vulgar questions of arithmetic and common life. It is infinitely easier to meet them there, than when they contended for 'social order' and the like incomprehensibles. In the present case, for example, is it possible that any body can fail to see, that what they propose by their recipe, is to increase the profits and wages of one individual, by diminishing the profits and wages of some other? If the profits and wages in the trades which nobody wants, are to be increased by giving them a forced employment, it is clear that the profits and wages in some other trades will be diminished in a corresponding degree by the employment that is taken from them, and that there will be a loss

to the consuming public equal to the difference besides. That national wealth and prosperity flow from the good profits and wages of the individual, is in itself a great truth. But then these good profits and wages must arise from a positive increase of trade in the aggregate, which can only be the result of freedom; and not from robbing one man to serve another. The rate of profits and wages depends on the velocity with which trade on the whole is increasing or the contrary. In mathematical terms, it varies as the fluxion of the trade; and this again depends upon the progress that is making in pushing forward the whole scale of production, by obtaining an increased command over the first necessaries of life, and is not to be effected by shutting ourselves up in a rat-trap and rubbing our halfpence against each other. It is this which demonstrates the limited utility of the various palliatives, with which men amuse themselves instead of applying their efforts to the removal of the great evil which is the shutting up. Such, for example, are the proposed remedies of economy,' of clubs for reducing the price of the necessaries of life,' and of co-operative societies.' If the rats were to be advised to economize or to 'co-operate,' it is evident that so long as there was a law restricting the quantity of corn they should be allowed to consume, all that they could do by it would be to make their respective shares go a little further than before, and to cause the division to approach a little nearer to equality. But none of these inventions could cause a hundred rats to get fat upon the allowance of twenty-five. In so far as on their first application they produced a temporary alleviation of the misery of the classes whose shares had been smallest, they would tend to the production of a certain degree of increase in the population of rats in these classes. But as soon as this effect was accomplished, all things would go on as before ; except that the palliative which had been applied already, could not be applied afresh. The secret of good living, with rats or men, consists in keeping open the connection with the power of procuring a continually increasing quantity of food; and whichever of them allow themselves to be cut off from it to please their betters, condemn themselves to starve for their amusement.

Finally, in order to support the monkey system,

'Promote religion [of the kind which will make men servile]-protect public morals [among those who are to give and not to take]-repress vice and infidelity by setting each man to rob his neighbour, and religion to hold the door]-keep the different classes of the community in strict subordination to each other [that slaves, white and black, may continue as they are]-and cherish the principles, feelings, and habits, which give

stability, beauty, and happiness to society [constituted on the basis that every man shall feed out of his neighbour's pot who can.']—p. 118.

It is not easy to imagine what possible connection religion can have with the question whether monkeys are best fed out of each others pans, except as a blind. Somebody is to be persuaded, that it is pious to be plundered. Somebody is to be robbed by the intervention; and somebody else is to get fat. This is the end-all and be-all of the anti-liberals piety. They call upon God, that they may take from man. They take away our means of living on this earth; and offer us their bill on heaven, payable to bearer, in return.

Nobody believes that the system of plundering one tradesman to please another, can hold out much longer. It is right, however, to take all possible means to accelerate its fall. Wherever it has been tried-in England, in America, in France-there appears to be a general consent to come to an avowal of its folly. The means to hasten this, are, first, to endeavour to bring forward the manufacturers who are injured by the prohibition of the foreign trade. Thus in France, for example, the wine-growers are finding out, that they are the people who are depressed by the foolish attempt to produce iron and cotton goods, instead of buying them from foreigners with wine. In the next place, to impress on men in general, the high degree in which they are interested in the question in their character of consumers; and the certainty that if there is the least apparent doubt whether they are among the final gainers by the monkey system or not, the truth is that they are enormous losers. Finally, that the people should speak out, and not allow themselves to be beaten down by the sound and fury of their opponents. The system is only the monkey system after all, whatever may be the Babel of noises got up among its supporters. The government is willing; but wants the aid of the public voice. It rests mainly with the public, whether they will continue to be fed out of one another's pans, or not.

ART. VIII.-The Picture of Australia: exhibiting New Holland, Van Diemen's Land, and all the Settlements, from the first at Sydney to the last at the Swan River. London. 1829. Whittaker and Co.

NEW Holland is one of those countries about which a great

deal has been written and very little is known. It is of course easy to state its distance from the other great continents of the world, to inform the reader in what degree of latitude and longitude it is found, and to conjecture pretty nearly the

With the aid

circumference of its vast and varied shores. of a few intelligent settlers, and clever navigators, a tolerably correct picture may be sketched of a small portion of the eastern coasts, with some few points, here and there, on the other parts of the shore; but beyond this our real knowledge does not extend, and if we proceed, our descriptions must be grounded in great measure on theory and conjecture. Information, however, is continually on the increase. The courage and enterprise of our countrymen are perpetually conducting them into the unexplored regions of this new world, and the occurrences of almost every day throw some new light upon its singularly mysterious recesses.

The

From Wilson's Promontory, the most southern point of New Holland, to Cape Howe, a distance of about two hundred miles, the shore is low, sandy and barren. Hills, however, are discoverable at a considerable distance inland; but of these, or the interjacent country, nothing whatever is known. character of the coast still continues the same, or nearly so, from Cape Howe to Shoal Haven River, the only difference being, that the low, sandy beaches already noticed occasionally give place on this part of the coast to stony hills, or extensive swamps. Among these swamps, unfit for culture, and uninviting even to the savage, the mode may be studied by which in this extraordinary portion of the world, the earth encroaches upon the dominions of the ocean. Here a process, similar to that which bestowed Lower Egypt upon the children of Misraim, and which is alluded to by Herodotus and described by Volney, is now going on before our eyes. A small bay, or inlet of the sea, is first cut off from the great body of waters by a sand-bank thrown up by the action of the waves, and thus becomes a detached lagoon; the sun evaporating the enclosed waters, and plants springing up in the mud, the lagoon by degrees becomes a marsh. As the process of evaporation proceeds, the mud assumes greater consistency, vegetation becomes more active, rank jungles are formed, trees spring up, and at length the waters are excluded altogether, and man finds the soil firm enough for his footsteps.

From Shoal Haven River to Breaksea Spit, the shore is of a bolder and more varied character, consisting sometimes, as in the neighbourhood of Port Jackson, of a range of lofty, perpendicular cliffs, alternating with low, sandy beaches, backed by lagoons. In this line of coast there are numerous natural harbours, some of which are capable of receiving vessels of all sizes, while others are only adapted for smaller craft. For some

distance farther northward, the shore assumes a new aspect, the margin of the sea being covered with impenetrable forests of mangroves; but when we have passed Shoal Water Bay, and Broad Sound, the land swells into lofty hills, the roots of which run out in bold promontories into the Pacific. From this point. to Cape York the curse of barrenness prevails upon the coast, there being, according to captain King, nothing like a river or spring of any consequence to be found in a space of seven hundred miles. Doubling Cape York, and following the vast sweep of the Gulf of Carpenteria, for upwards of nine hundred miles, we find a shore equally barren, and presenting to the eye nothing but vast sheets of blue mud or sand, with a back-ground of marsh, flooded in rainy weather and scorched to dust during droughts. This line of coast terminates at Cape Wesel, but little or no change takes place in the character of the soil. Even where a river exists, it is said to roll its fruitless waters over sterile plains; but this can only be true of the vicinity of the sea, for the thickly-wooded hills, discoverable in the distance, prove that the desert which stretches round this portion of the island is merely a narrow belt.

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Proceeding onward from Cape Van Diemen to Northwest Cape, we still find low shores, burnt up during the dry season, inundated during the rains, and covered over, at intervals, by thick forests of mangroves, by vast beds of salt, or by saline plants. It is probable that the description given of this part of the coast by navigators resembles that which, according to Plutarch, in his Life of Theseus, ancient geogra phers were accustomed to give of all remote and little explored regions: "here, said they, in their maps, are nothing but impassable morasses, or trackless deserts.' Four hundred miles, at least, of this coast, have only been seen at intervals from a distance out at sea; and the imaginations of those who thus glanced at it as they were driven along before the wind, being rather gloomy than cheerful, the land was at once pronounced to be unfertile and uninhabitable. Few countries, however, could be judged of correctly from such flying observations. In sailing along the shores of England or France we should frequently, were we to trust implicitly to the aspect of the coast, pronounce the soil to be eminently barren, while behind the bleak cliffs, vallies and plains of the greatest luxuriance and beauty are found.

From Northwest Cape to Cape Leewin the character of the coast, with the exception of the small portion surveyed by captain Stirling, appears to be little if at all known. The French