_Free Emigrants_.

Of what class then, you ask, have been the great mass of emigrants from
England, not convicts? Excellent people in their way, most of them;
farmers, army and navy surgeons, subalterns on half-pay, and a number
of indescribable adventurers, from about the twentieth rank in England.
They came here to live, not to enjoy; to eat and drink, not to refine;
"to settle"--that is, to roll in a gross plenty for the body, but to
starve their minds. To these must be added convicts, many of whom are
become rich and influential; and some, not exactly convicts, to whom
England ceased to be a convenient residence. The English who live at
Boulogne, some for cheapness, some from misfortune, and some from fear,
would offer, I should think, a fair sample of the materials which
compose the best society in New South Wales; though, I must admit, that
the bustling, thriving settler of New South Wales is a companion, rather
ignorant though he be--far away preferable to the not more enlightened,
but melancholy English sluggard of Boulogne. To form a due conception of
the "upper classes" here, suppose all the natives of France annihilated,
and the whole country belonging to the English residents of Boulogne.
In that case, there would be an almost perfect resemblance between those
Englishmen who, across a narrow channel, can see their own country, and
those who, at its antipodes look upon the Pacific Ocean.


_Society and Manners_.

As in France, the first class call themselves "gens comme il faut;" and
in England, "people of fashion," or "the world"--so here, the leaders