, in Great Britain. No doubt, Providence has in these, and in
our other colonies, given England a means of letting its surplus
population escape in a way that shall not be merely safe, but even
profitable, to the mother country, as well as to the emigrants
themselves. The average consumption of English manufactures by the
Australian colonists, has recently been stated to amount to ten guineas
a-head, while that of the inhabitants of the European countries is only
two shillings.[223] And what true-born Englishman would refuse to
rejoice in the increased demand thus likely to be opened for our
manufactures, and in the increased prosperity of our fellow-subjects on
the other side of the globe, who are thus enabled to supply their own
wants, by purchasing English goods? The objections which we hear
occasionally urged against emigration amount, with one important
exception, to little or nothing. The distance and long voyage, the risk
of not succeeding, the impossibility now of pig-drivers and convicts
becoming masters of many thousands a-year,[224] the paramount necessity
of patient industry and prudent forecast in Australia, no less than in
the rest of the world,--all these circumstances offer no reasonable
hindrance to the emigrant's attempt, either to better his condition, or
else to get that daily bread which in England he finds difficult to be
obtained. And, whatever obstacles of this kind may at first deter him,
the careful settler will soon find himself victorious over these, and
more comfortably situated, in a worldly sense, than he ever before was.

[223] See the speech of Mr. C. Buller in the House of Commons, on
Thursday, April 6th, 1843, upon the subject of colonization.

[224] See Evidence before Committee on Transportation in 1837, p. 41.

_In a worldly sense_, it is said, because, unhappily, there is one great
objection to all emigration, belonging to it of necessity, which, in the
English colonies, and not least so in Australia, has been fearfully
increased and needlessly aggravated. The want of religious instruction
in newly-peopled countries, and among a widely-scattered and pastoral
population, must needs be grievous, even under the most favourable
circumstances. And if these countries are used as penal settlements, the
want is likely to be still more deplorable. But the evil is inflamed to
the utmost degree, when, as in Australia during the earlier years of its
colonial history, little provision of