of the character of the poor
than the rich, when placed in such dense localities. The latter have
a neighbourhood to watch them, because their station renders them
conspicuous--the former have none. Witness the rapid and general
corruption of the higher ranks, when they get away from such
restraint, amidst the profligacy of New South Wales.

In the foremost rank of the causes which demoralize the urban and
mining population, we must place the frequency of those strikes which
unhappily have now become so common as to be of more frequent
occurrence than a wet season, even in our humid climate. During the
last twenty years there have been six great strikes: viz. in 1826,
1828, 1834, 1837, 1842, and 1844. All of these have kept multitudes
of the labouring poor idle for months together. Incalculable is the
demoralization thus produced upon the great mass of the working
classes. We speak not of the actual increase of commitments during
the continuance of a great strike, though that increase is so
considerable that it in general augments them in a single year from
thirty to fifty per cent.[7] We allude to the far more general and
lasting causes of demoralization which arise from the arraying of one
portion of the community in fierce hostility against another, the
wretchedness which is spread among multitudes by months of compulsory
idleness, and the not less ruinous effect of depriving them of
_occupation_ during such protracted periods. When we recollect that
such is the vehemence of party feeling produced by these disastrous
combinations, that it so far obliterates all sense of right and wrong
as generally to make their members countenance contumely and insult,
sometimes even robbery, fire-raising, and murder, committed on
innocent persons who are only striving to earn an honest livelihood
for themselves by hard labour, but in opposition to the strike; and
that it induces twenty and thirty thousand persons to yield implicit
obedience to the commands of an unknown committee, who have power to
force them to do what the Sultan Mahmoud, or the Committee of Public
Safety, never ventured to attempt--to abstain from labour, and endure
want and starvation for months together, for an object of which they
often in secret disapprove--it may be conceived how wide-spread and
fatal is the confusion of moral principle, and habits of idleness and
insubordination thus produced. Their effects invariably appear for a
course of years afterward