tance to one who found it
a single instance, as a governor would be likely to do. A governor sees
smooth things. All sorts of people (except the working sort) frequent
his receptions--the fashionable classes, who are far more loyal to
England for the most part than the English themselves, their fringe, and
then the wealthier of the tradespeople. It is proven every day that a
democracy is the happiest hunting ground for a man with a title. The
very rarity of the distinction makes it more precious to those who value
it, and the titled governors of one of our great colonies occupies
a position which is vastly higher in public esteem than that of his
fellow-noblemen at home. He is the local fount of honour. To sit at
his table, and to be on terms of friendship with him is to gratify the
highest social ambition. He is the direct representative of the Crown,
and the people who desire to associate with him must not have views
which are inimical to existing forms of government, or, if they hold
them, they must keep them carefully concealed. The governor responds to
the toast of his own health and talks of those ties which bind and must
bind the mother country to her children. His hearers are at one with
him, and cheer him with hearty vigour. Absence from the dear old land
has made their hearts grow fonder. Their loyalty is perfervid. Everybody
goes home in a sentimental glow and the native born working-man reads
his _Sydney Bulletin_ over a long-sleever and execrates the name of the
country which bore his father and mother.

The journal just named is very capably written and edited. The brightest
Australian verse and the best Australian stories find their way into
its columns. Its illustrations are sometimes brilliant, though the high
standard is not always maintained. And having thus spoken an honest mind
in its favour I leave myself at liberty to say that it is probably the
wrongest-headed and most mischievous journal in the world. People try to
treat it as a negligible quantity when they disagree with it. But I have
seen as much of the surface of the country and as much of its people
as most men, and I have found the pestilent print everywhere, and
everywhere have found it influential. For some time past it has been
telling blood-curdling stories of the iniquities of prison rule in
Tasmania, with the tacit conclusion that nothing but the power of the
working classes makes a repetition of these atrocities impossible.
It compa