vided they can get rid of
their temporary difficulties. Litigation is short and quick. Conveyancing
is downright profit; a deed, however short, conveying a piece of land,
however trifling, costs five guineas. There are no stamps, and the work is
done in an hour. More valuable properties are conveyed by a deed generally
charged nine guineas. My friend ---- has drawn twelve such deeds in his
office in the course of one day; and with these eyes I have seen him earn
six guineas in as many minutes, by appearing at the police-office when a
dispute has arisen between a master and his servant. All quarrels of this
kind are arranged at the police-office, when the amount of wages received
by the servant does not exceed thirty pounds annually. An attorney with
brains cannot fail to get ahead. He has only to use dispatch, and to begin
and continue in one even and undeviating course. Our barristers are few in
number. There are but four of then. There is still a glorious field for a
barrister of talent, and especially if he be conversant with the nicer
points of conveyancing. Any clever barrister up to the business and a good
speaker, might rely upon making immediately at least a thousand a-year;
the community are looking and waiting for such a man. A fellow with no
capital and no profession had better not show his face in Melbourne. It is
a thousand to one against him. Compared to his position that of a labourer
is an enviable one; yet any respectable and intelligent man tolerably well
educated, coming here with four or five hundred pounds in his pocket, may
certainly, in a couple of years, and in twenty different ways, treble that
capital. The best and most promising is the following:--Buy in any
_growing_ part of the town of Melbourne, a small piece of town allotment.
This will cost fifty pounds, upon this you may erect two small brick
cottages, containing each two rooms and a kitchen, and well fitted for a
respectable tradesman. Two hundred and forty pounds will build them up;
thus the whole expense of cottages and ground is two hundred and ninety
pounds at most. Each cottage will, for a moral certainty, let for one
pound five shillings per week, and thus return you a clear rental of
sixty-four pounds per annum, for the sum of one hundred and forty-four
pounds laid out. Some capitalists are not long in discovering this mode of
adding to their fortunes, and it is not surprising that such men, with
ease, get speedily rich. Many indivi