ITS EFFECTS UPON ALL CLASSES.

But time and intellect are all worth much more in Australia than they are in England, and everyone can realize upon his capital and speculate profitably upon his intelligence, activity, and strength; for all of these he gets paid, hence but few men are willing to follow professions.  Clergymen too often turn farmers and speculators, even if they do not altogether throw aside their sacred character.  Medical men but rarely pursue their practice, when such remunerating fields of enterprise are laid open to them; soldiers abandon their calling; and the government officers are all virtually farmers and stock-owners.

This is to be expected, from the character of man.  In a new colony everything increases rapidly in worth—­a landed estate which can be bought in the early stages of its existence at a mere nominal price grows yearly in value without a penny being expended upon it; stock increases in a geometrical ratio, at little or no cost, for there is plenty of land to pasture them upon.  Nothing of this kind either does or can take place in England; and when the settler finds how changed his prospects are, and how new means of acquiring wealth are opened to him, he too often devotes his every thought and energy to the one object; and so far will this passion lead men that I have known an honourable member of council and leading magistrate in a colony take out a retail license, and add to his already vast wealth from the profits of a gin shop.

But as stock is that species of property from which the largest returns are realized, and that with the least labour, it is to this branch of industry that settlers generally direct their attention; indeed until plenty of stock is introduced into a new colony its success is wavering and uncertain, and its inhabitants are generally compelled to undergo a degree of poverty and privation which contrasts strangely with the affluence of the people occupying the more settled countries.  The degree of care and attention which is bestowed upon the breeding of stock necessarily ensures both a constant supply of it and its rapid diffusion over all accessible portions of the continent.

It is extremely difficult to convey to a mind which has never contemplated the subject an idea of the rapid advance of stock stations over the continent of Australia; there is something about it which bears an almost fabulous character; and the same circumstance takes place with regard to the rise in the price of town and country lands.  Those who have not witnessed such things can scarcely give credit to them.  In Western Australia town land was bought for twenty-three pounds an acre in the month of December 1839; and in the month of February 1840, large importations of stock having taken place, the same land was sold for sixty pounds an acre.  But in other colonies, where overland communication takes place, this would be regarded as a very small increase in price for a new colony; there are many instances in South Australia of people realizing, in less than two years, sums of money to the amount of from ten to twelve thousand pounds from the sale of town acres in the city of Adelaide.