the small-pox falls upon him like a plague; he dreads those calamities, though he does not know how to avert them; but, doubtless, would find his happiness increased, if they were averted. To deny this, is to suppose that men are reconciled to evils, because they are inevitable; and yet hurricanes, earthquakes, bodily decay, and death, stand highest in the catalogue of human calamities.

Where civilization gives new birth to new comparisons unfavourable to savage life, with the information that a greater good is possible, it generally connects the means of attaining it. The savage no sooner becomes ashamed of his nakedness, than the loom is ready to clothe him; the forge prepares for him more perfect tools, when he is disgusted with the awkwardness of his own: his weakness is strengthened, and his wants supplied as soon as they are discovered; and the use of the discovery is, that it enables him to derive from comparison the best proof of present happiness. A man born blind is ignorant of the pleasures of which he is deprived. After the restoration of his sight, his happiness will be increased from two causes;-from the delight he experiences at the novel accession of power, and from the contrast he will always be enabled to make between his two situations, long after the pleasure of novelty has ceased. For these reasons, it is humane to restore him to sight.

But, however beneficial to the general interests of mankind the civilization of barbarous countries may be considered to be, in this particular instance of it, the interest of Great Britain would seem to have been very little consulted. With fanciful schemes of universal good we have no business to meddle. Why we are to erect penitentiary houses and prisons at the distance of half the diameter of the globe, and, to incur the enormous expense of feeding and transporting their inhabitants to and at such a distance, it is extremely difficult to discover. It certainly is not from any deficiency of barren islands near our own coast, nor of uncultivated wastes in the interior; and if we were sufficiently fortunate to be wanting in such species of accommodation, we might discover in Canada, or the West Indies, or on the coast of Africa, a climate malignant enough, or a soil sufficiently sterile, to revenge all the injuries which have been inflicted on society by pick-pockets, larcenists, and petty felons.-Upon the foundation of a new colony, and especially one peopled by criminals, there is a disposition in

Government (where any circumstance in the commission of the crime affords the least pretence for the commutation) to convert capital punishments into transportation; and by these means to hold forth a very dangerous, though certainly a very unintentional, encouragement to offences. And when the history of the colony has been attentively perused in the parish of St. Giles, the ancient avocation of picking pockets will certainly not become more discreditable from the knowledge, that it may eventually lead to the possession of a farm of a thousand acres on the river Hawkesbury. Since the benevolent Howard attacked our prisons, incarceration has become not only healthy but elegant; and a county jail is precisely the place to which any pauper might wish to retire to gratify his taste for magnificence as well as for comfort. Upon the same principle, there is some risk that transportation will be considered as one of the surest roads to honour and to wealth; and that no felon will hear a verdict of not guilty' without considering himself as cut off in the fairest career of prosperity. It is foolishly believed, that the colony of Botany Bay unites our moral and commercial interests, and that we shall receive hereafter an ample equivalent, in bales of goods, for all the vices we export. Unfortunately, the expenses we have incurred in founding the colony, will not retard the natural progress of its emancipation, or prevent the attacks of other nations, who will be as desirous of reaping the fruit, as if they had sown the seed. It is a colony, besides, begun under every possible disadvantage; it is too distant to be long governed, or well defended; it is undertaken, not by the voluntary association of individuals, but by Government, and by means of compulsory labour. A nation must, indeed, be redundant in capital, that will expend it where the hopes of a just return are so very small.

It may be a very curious consideration, to reflect what we are to do with this colony when it comes to years of discretion. Are we to spend another hundred millions of money in discovering its strength, and to humble ourselves again before a fresh set of Washingtons and Franklins? The moment after we have suffered such serious mischief from the escape of the old tiger, we are breeding up a young cub, whom we cannot render less ferocious, or more secure. If we are gradually to manumit the colony, as it is more and more capable of protecting itself, the degrees of emancipation, and the periods at

which they are to take place, will be judged of very differently by the two nations. But we confess ourselves not to be so sanguine as to suppose, that a spirited and commercial people would, in spite of the example of America, ever consent to abandon their sovereignty over an important colony, without a struggle. Endless blood and treasure will be exhausted to support a tax on kangaroos' skins; faithful Commons will go on voting fresh supplies to support a just and necessary war; and Newgate, then become a quarter of the world, will evince a heroism, not unworthy of the great characters by whom she was originally peopled.

The experiment, however, is not less interesting in a moral, because it is objectionable in a commercial point of view. It is an object of the highest curiosity, thus to have the growth of a nation subjected to our examination; to trace it by such faithful records, from the first day of its existence; and to gather that knowledge of the progress of human affairs, from actual experience, which is considered to be only accessible to the conjectural reflections of enlightened minds.

Human nature, under very old governments, is so trimmed, and pruned, and ornamented, and led into such a variety of factitious shapes, that we are almost ignorant of the appearance it would assume, if it were left more to itself. From such an experiment as that now before us, we shall be better able to appreciate what circumstances of our situation are owing to those permanent laws by which all men are influenced, and what to the accidental positions in which we have been placed. New circumstances will throw new light upon the effects of our religious, political and economical institutions, if we cause them to be adopted as models in our rising empire; and if we do not, we shall estimate the effects of their presence, by observing those which are produced by their non-existence.

The history of the colony is at present, however, in its least interesting state, on account of the great preponderance of depraved inhabitants, whose crimes and irregularities give a monotony to the narrative, which it cannot lose, till the respectable part of the community come to bear a greater proportion to the criminal.

These Memoirs of Colonel Collins, resume the history of the colony from the period at which he concluded it in his former volume, September 1796, and continue it down to August 1801. They are written in the style of a journal,

VOL. I.-4

which though not the most agreeable mode of conveying information, is certainly the most authentic, and contrives to banish the suspicion (and most probably the reality) of the interference. of a book-maker-a species of gentlemen who are now almost become necessary to deliver naval and military authors in their literary labours, though they do not always atone, by orthography and grammar, for the sacrifice of truth and simplicity. Mr. Collins's book is written with great plainness and candour: he appears to be a man always meaning well; of good, plain common sense; and composed of those well-wearing materials, which adapt a person for situations where genius and refinement would only prove a source of misery and of error.

We shall proceed to lay before our readers an analysis of the most important matter contained in this volume.

The natives in the vicinity of Port Jackson stand extremely low, in point of civilization, when compared with many other savages, with whom the discoveries of Captain Cook have made us acquainted. Their notions of religion exceed even that degree of absurdity which we are led to expect in the creed of a barbarous people. In politics, they appear to have scarcely advanced beyond family-government. Huts they have none; and, in all their economical inventions, there is a rudeness and deficiency of ingenuity, unpleasant, when contrasted with the instances of dexterity with which the descriptions and importations of our navigators have rendered us so familiar. Their numbers appear to us to be very small: a fact, at once, indicative either of the ferocity of manners in any people, or, more probably, of the sterility of their country; but which, in the present instance, proceeds from both these causes.

'Gaining every day (says Mr. Collins) some further knowledge of the inhuman habits and customs of these people, their being so thinly scattered through the country ceased to be a matter of surprise. It was almost daily seen, that from some trifling cause or other, they were continually living in a state of warfare: to this must be added their brutal treatment of their women, who are themselves equally destructive to the measure of population, by the horrid and cruel custom of endeavouring to cause a miscarriage, which their female acquaintances effect by pressing the body in such a way, as to destroy the infant in the womb; which violence not unfrequently occasions the death of the unnatural mother also. To this they have recourse to avoid the trouble of carrying the infant about when born, which, when it is very young, or at the breast, is the duty of the woman. The operation for this destructive purpose is termed Mee-bra. The bury ng an infant (when at the breast) with the mother, if she should

die, is another shocking cause of the thinness of population among them. The fact that such an operation as the Mee-bra was practised by these wretched people, was communicated by one of the natives to the principal surgeon of the settlement.'-(p. 124, 125.)

It is remarkable, that the same paucity of numbers has been observed in every part of New Holland which has hitherto been explored; and yet there is not the smallest reason to conjecture that the population of it has been very recent; nor do the people bear any marks of descent from the inhabitants of the numerous islands by which this great continent is surrounded. The force of population can only be resisted by some great physical evils; and many of the causes of this scarcity of human beings which Mr. Collins refers to the ferocity of the natives, are ultimately referable to the difficulty of support. We have always considered this phenomenon as a symptom extremely unfavourable to the future destinies of this country. It is easy to launch out into eulogiums of the fertility of nature in particular spots; but the most probable reason why a country that has been long inhabited, is not well inhabited, is, that it is not calculated to support many inhabitants without great labour. It is difficult to suppose any other causes powerful enough to resist the impetuous tendency of man, to obey that mandate for increase and multiplication, which has certainly been better observed than any other declaration of the Divine will ever revealed to us.

There appears to be some tendency to civilization, and some tolerable notions of justice, in a practice very similar to our custom of duelling; for duelling, though barbarous in civilized, is a highly civilized institution among barbarous people: and when compared to assassination, is a prodigious victory gained over human passions. Whoever kills another in the neighbourhood of Botany Bay, is compelled to appear at an appointed day before the friends of the deceased, and to sustain the attacks of their missile weapons. If he is killed, he is deemed to have met with a deserved death; if not, he is considered to have expiated the crime for the commission of which he was exposed to the danger. There is in this institution a command over present impulses, a prevention of secrecy in the gratification of revenge, and a wholesome correction of that passion by the effect of public observation, which evince such a superiority to the mere animal passions of ordinary savages, and form such a contrast to the rest of the history of this people,