oneous impressions, formed from the writings of
discontented colonists, who, without a sufficiently lengthened residence
in the country, or opportunities to form correct opinions, have not only
disregarded facts, but have presumed to pass judgment upon what they
have never appreciated or understood, and have written statements
decidedly false and scandalous.

It is notorious that in some circles of society, the bare mention of
Australia in connexion with any one's name is sufficient to create a
feeling of distrust and contempt, and the colonists are at once stamped
as being, at least, something mean, with antecedents involved in a
suspicious obscurity. Unfortunately there have been writers, too, who
have come before the public professing an intimate acquaintance with,
and an impartial judgment of, colonial life, who have not failed to heap
aspersions on the very name of the country and everything connected with
it, and to envenom their writings with the rankest untruths. I have read
accounts of colonial society where it has been characterized as the
vilest that can be imagined in a civilized state; where the men are
spoken of as habitual debauchees, and the women as universally
shameless, immoral, and dissipated; where life and property are
insecure; and bushrangers are the terror of the inhabitants.

I don't say such productions are numerous. I rejoice that they are not;
but many people are inclined to receive such a description as a truthful
one, and to consider a true narration of facts as merely an over-drawn
and flattering panegyric of an interested author. People have been long
accustomed to look upon Australia as only a place for convicts, and the
population, if not prisoners themselves or those who have served their
allotted term, at least as the descendants of those who have done so. I
have frequently had the question gravely put to me whether or not such
is the case; and have experienced great difficulty in inducing people
to believe otherwise. They forget, if indeed they ever knew, that many
leading men in this country owe their position in society to a
prosperous career in the Australian colonies, and that more than half
the colonial settlers are men of good family connexions who have
emigrated to improve their position in occupations which are at the same
time remunerative and honourable.

When this is remembered, in conjunction with the fact that
transportation has been discontinued for many years, and t