[203] 1 Cor. xii. 13. After all that has been stated respecting the three great classes into which society in Australia is divided, it need scarcely be added that the taste displayed by many of the inhabitants of the metropolis of New South Wales is none of the purest or best. Gay equipages, dashing horses, tandems, and racers, are among the favourite exhibitions of the wealth of the emancipist. For music or paintings but little taste prevails in Sydney, and for books, except those of a very low and worthless character, there is no great demand. A fine house, a fine carriage, fine horses, plenty of spirits to drink, appear to be thought the chief goods of human life; and among persons in every class, the acquisition of money is the one great object. Indeed this last passion, the love of gain, can scarcely be mentioned among the perverted habits by which the Australian colonies are infested, since it seems scarcely possible that the worship of Mammon can be practised more openly or carried much further than it is in the mother country. Yet the temptations to prefer gain to every thing else are unusually strong in these settlements. Professions have been abandoned because they are laborious and unprofitable, while clergymen, medical gentlemen, soldiers, government officers, in short, all classes of men, have made haste to get rich by holding land and stock. An estate, which originally cost little or nothing, grows yearly in value, without a penny being spent upon it; stock speedily increases at very small cost, for there is abundance of pasture for it; and when the settler finds these means of gaining wealth opened to him, he is too apt to devote all his thoughts and energies to this one object. "I have known," says Captain Grey, "an honourable member of council, and leading magistrate in a colony, take out a retail licence, and add to his already vast wealth from the profits of a gin-shop."[204] [204] Grey's Travels in Western Australia, vol. ii. pp. 192-3.