a day by his labour. When I spoke to him, he complained
of low wages. "At New York, friend," said I, "five shillings a day are
thought quite enough." "I know that," he answered; "I was born there,
and came here to get eight shillings a day, which, I was told, was the
lowest rate hereabouts." It turned out that he never worked more than
three days in the week, and that, in order to obtain twenty-four
shillings a week by three days' labour, he had made a circuitous voyage
of some thousand miles from the place where he was born, and where he
could have earned thirty shillings a week by working every day.

_Slang_.

The base language of English thieves is becoming the established
language of the colony. Terms of slang and flash are used, as a matter
of course, every where, from the gaols to the Viceroy's palace, not
excepting the Bar and the Bench. No doubt they will be reckoned quite
parliamentary, as soon as we obtain a parliament.

_Bush-ranging_

Is a dreadful evil, being a kind of land piracy. None but back settlers,
it is true, are exposed to its burnings, rapes, and massacres; but these
are as much British subjects as the inhabitants of Sydney or of Downing
Street. And, if the inhabitants of towns escape those horrors, they are
liable to be murdered in a quiet way, and their property is exposed to
every kind of depredation. Their actual losses by robbery, including the
expense and loss of time occasioned by prosecutions, are very great.

* * * * *

The concluding observations on "the extension of Britain," and her
colonial interests, are in a forcible and liberal tone, but as they
take rather too political a turn for our pages, we recommend the
anxious reader to the volume itself, which is altogether the
production of an original thinker and an impartial writer.

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

* * * * *

THE CRUISE OF H.M. SHIP TORCH.

_A Fragment_.

I was the mate of the morning watch, and, as day dawned, I had amused
myself with other younkers over the side, examining the shot holes and
other injuries sustained from the fire of the frigate, and contrasting
the clean, sharp, well-defined apertures, made by the 24 lb. shot from
the long guns, with the bruised and splintered ones from the 32 lb.
carronades; but the men had begun to wash down the decks, and the
first gush of clotted bloo