of earning a livelihood in a ruined and worthless colony; and having
thus obtained money enough to enable them to return to England, they
hasten to throw themselves and their sorrows into the arms of their
sympathizing relatives.

Nothing can be more absurd than to imagine that a fortune may be made
in a colony by those who have neither in them nor about them any of
the elements or qualities by which fortunes are gained at home.

There are, unfortunately, few sources of wealth peculiar to a colony.
The only advantage which the emigrant may reasonably calculate upon
enjoying, is the diminution of competition. In England the crowd is
so dense that men smother one another.

It is only by opening up the same channels of wealth under more
favourable circumstances, that the emigrant has any right to
calculate upon success. Without a profession, without any legitimate
calling in which his early years have been properly instructed;
without any knowledge or any habits of business, a man has no better
prospect of making a fortune in a colony than at home. None,
however, so circumstanced, entertains this belief; on the contrary,
he enters upon his new career without any misgivings, and with the
courage and enthusiasm of a newly enlisted recruit.

Alas! the disappointment which so soon and so inevitably succeeds,
brings a crowd of vices and miseries in its train.



CHAPTER 2.