There is one means for the establishment of credit,' he says, 'equally important with the others which I have stated- -a sentiment of respect for morals, sufficiently diffused to overawe the government, and intimidate it from treating with bad

faith any solemn engagements contracted in the name of the state. It is this respect for morals which seems at present to have disappeared; a respect which the Revolution has destroyed, and which is unquestionably one of the firmest supports of national faith.'

The terrorists of this country are so extremely alarmed at the power of Bonaparte, that they ascribe to him resources, which M. Necker very justly observes to be incompatible-despotism and credit. Now, clearly, if he be so omnipotent in France as he is represented to be, there is an end of all credit; for nobody will trust him whom nobody can compel to pay; and if he establishes a credit, he loses all that temporary vigour which is derived from a revolutionary government. Either the despotism or the credit of France directed against this country would be highly formidable; but, both together, can never be directed at the same time.

In this part of his work, M. Necker very justly points out one of the most capital defects of Mr. Pitt's administration; who always supposed that the power of France was to cease with her credit, and measured the period of her existence by the depreciation of her assignats. Whereas, France was never more powerful than when she was totally unable to borrow a single shilling in the whole circumference of Europe, and when her assignats were not worth the paper on which they were stamped.

Such are the principal contents of M. Necker's very respectable work. Whether, in the course of that work, his political notions appear to be derived from a successful study of the passions of mankind, and whether his plan for the establishment of a republican government in France, for the ninth or tenth time, evinces a more sanguine, or a more sagacious mind, than the rest of the world, we would rather our readers should decide for themselves, than expose ourselves to any imputation of arrogance by deciding

for them. But when we consider the pacific and impartial disposition which characterises the Last Views on Politics and Finance, the serene benevolence which it always displays, and the pure morals which it always inculcates, we cannot help entertaining a high respect for its venerable author, and feeling a fervent wish that the last views of every public man may proceed from a heart as upright, and be directed to objects as good.

AUSTRALIA. (E. REVIEW, 1803.)

Account of the English Colony of New South Wales. By Lieutenant-Colonel Collins, of the Royal Marines. Vol. II. 4to. Cadell and Davies, London.

To introduce an European population, and, consequently, the arts and civilisation of Europe into such an untrodden country as New Holland, is to confer a lasting and important benefit upon the world. If man be destined for perpetual activity, and if the proper objects of that activity be the subjugation of physical difficulties, and of his own dangerous passions, how absurd are those systems which proscribe the acquisitions of science and the restraints of law, and would arrest the progress of man in the rudest and earliest stages of his existence! Indeed, opinions so very extravagant in their nature must be attributed rather to the wantonness of paradox, than to sober reflection, and extended inquiry.

To suppose the savage state permanent, we must suppose the numbers of those who compose it to be stationary, and the various passions by which men have actually emerged from it to be extinct; and this is to suppose man a very different being from what he really is. To prove such a permanence beneficial (if it were possible), we must have recourse to matter of fact, and judge of the rude state of society, not from the praises of tranquil literati, but from the narratives of those who have seen it through a nearer and better medium than that of imagination. There is an argument, however, for the continuation of evil, drawn from the ignorance

of good; by which it is contended, that to teach men their situation can be better, is to teach them that it is bad, and to destroy that happiness which always results from an ignorance that any greater happiness is within our reach. All pains and pleasures are clearly by comparison; but the most deplorable savage enjoys a sufficient contrast of good, to know that the grosser evils from which civilisation rescues him are evils. A New Hollander seldom passes a year without suffering from famine; 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 civilisation gives 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 proofs 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 civilisation 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 penitentiaryhouses 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 pickpockets, 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 expense 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 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, 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 bookmaker -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 Jack son stand extremely low in point of civilisation, 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 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 acquaintance effect by pressing the body in such a

in a state of warfare: to this must be added their

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 burying 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 civilisation, and some tolerable notions of justice, in a practice very similar to our custom of duelling; for duelling, though barbarous in civilised, is a highly civilised 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,