naturally. Now, people arrive with glowing ideas of the beauty and
fertility of the country, and finding everything difficult of access
there, betake themselves to shopkeeping, forcing up rents to an
exorbitant sum, and losing their little capital. I think my opinion
borne out by the fact, that the country population of Grant County was
1959 in 1846, and 4469 in 1851; Geelong in 1846 had 1911, and in 1851,
8000--the town population more than quadrupling itself in the last
five years, the county increasing only 2510. Melbourne and Bourke
County are nearly in the same position.

There are seven or eight merchants in Geelong who import goods of all
kinds, twenty-two drapery establishments in a respectable way, besides
numbers of small ones on the outskirts; other trades are
proportionately overdone. Melbourne is, I am credibly informed,
equally crowded. These facts shew that there is no opening for people
in business. A great imposition is practised by stating the increase
of a town at so much per cent., or having doubled or trebled itself in
so short a time, the fact being that even its present condition may be
that only of a village. Interested parties too often talk their places
into notice; and if people do not deal in 'notions,' they all have
some allotment that will just suit you, which they don't care to keep
any longer.

An argument from the amount of imports is made use of unfairly. The
United States are set down at 30s. per head, Australia about L.7 per
head. This latter, they say, is the country to encourage, to emigrate
to--see how prosperous it is! being blind, apparently, to the fact,
that Australia, having nothing as yet but the raw material, tallow and
wool, it must barter all it has for what it wants--a proof to me as
much of necessity as of prosperity. Many more persons cannot engage