As for mental wants, talking and reading are out of the question,
except it be to scold your servants, and to con over a Sydney
newspaper, which contains little else but the miserable party politics
of this speck upon the globe, reports of crime and punishment, and
low-lived slang and flash, such as fill the pothouse Sunday papers of
London.

Literary men, men of science, philosophers, do not emigrate to new
countries where their acquirements would be neither rewarded nor
admired. Sir Walter Scott, Sir Humphry Davy, and Mr. Malthus, would
not earn as much in this colony as three brawny experienced ploughmen;
and though the inordinate vanity of a new people might be gratified by
the possession of them, they would be considered as mere ornaments,
and would often be wholly neglected for things of greater utility.

* * * * *


House-rent, that great bugbear of certain economists, is indeed a
grievous affair at Sydney, as page 20 proves:--

Behold me established at Sydney, in a small house, a poor vamped-up
building, more inconvenient, and far more ugly, than you can imagine,
for which I pay a rent of £250 a year. For half the money you could
get twice as good a house in any English country town. This excessive
house-rent is caused by the dearness of labour, which enhances
the cost of building; for, either the builder will exact a rent
proportioned to his outlay, or (if he cannot obtain such a rent)
he will not build.