But the next horse I tried was comparatively blameless, so I bought him, and at the end of the first month sent in a claim to the Law Department for the usual allowance.  I was curtly informed that the amount had been reduced from fifty pounds to ten pounds for my horse, although sixty pounds was still allowed to the other horse for travelling the same distance, the calculation evidently being based on the supposition that the police magistrate’s horse would eat six times as much as mine.  Remonstrance was vain, and I found I had burdened myself with an animal, possessing no social or political influence whatever.  I knew already that the world was governed without wisdom, and I now felt that it was also ruled with extreme meanness.

And even after my horse was condemned to starve on ten pounds per annum, the cost of justice was still extravagant.  Without reckoning the expense incurred in erecting and maintaining three court houses, and three police stations, and paying three policemen for doing next to nothing, I ascertained from the cause lists that it cost the Government fourteen pounds sterling every time we fined Terry, the cobbler, five shillings for being drunk; and Terry did not always pay the fines.  What ails British law is dignity, and the insufferable expense attending it.  The disease will never be cured until a strong-minded Chief Justice shall be found, who has sense enough to sit on the bench in his native hair, and to take off his coat when the thermometer rises to eighty degrees.  It was in that manner Judge Winstanley kept court at Waterloo in Illinois, and we had there quicker justice, cheaper laws, and better manners than those which this southern hemisphere yet exhibits.  As to the lawyers, if we did not like them, we could lynch them, so they were sociable and civil.  Moreover, Prairie de Long was discovered and settled nearly twenty years before Australia Felix was heard of.

The three villages had a life-long feud with, and a consuming jealousy of, each other.  Until my arrival I was not aware that there were three such places as Palmerston, Alberton, and Tarraville, claiming separate and rival existences.  I had a notion that they were merely straggling suburbs of the great city and seaport, Port Albert.  But it was a grievous mistake.  I asked a tall young lady at the hotel, who brought in some very salt fish that took the skin off the roof of my mouth, if she could recommend the society of these villages, and if she would favour me with her opinion as to which would be the best place to select as a residence, and she said, “The people there are an ’orrid lot.”  This was very discouraging; but, on making further enquiries, I found she only expressed the opinion which the inhabitants of these centres of population held of each other; and it was evident that I should have to demean myself with prudence, and show no particular affection for one place more than for another, or trouble would ensue.  Therefore,