Where population is thick and the choice of companions large, as at an English University, quarrels are rare, for men can easily avoid uncongenial society. Where population is sparse, as up the country in a colony, jealousies and animosities are more likely to arise and to become inveterate. And thus the same kind of petty personal and party spirit which is to be found in the Parliament, often pervades to a still worse and more noxious extent the Municipal Councils which have the local management of the country districts. Roads, excellently engineered and solidly made in old days by convict labour, are allowed to get out of repair because there is a dispute in the Municipal Council whether or not a new road shall be made, which would be shorter for some and longer for others. Corrupt officials are retained because their patrons or relations are in a majority in the Council. In one instance which came under my notice, an upright and conscientious magistrate was so moved to indignation by the unpunished misconduct and peculations of the police superintendent of the district, that he could not refrain from denouncing him in a hustings speech. The offender retorted by publicly giving the magistrate the lie, there and then, and at the next petty sessions summoned the magistrate for slander, the magistrate at the same time taking out a cross summons against him for insulting his superior. There could not be a doubt of the man’s guilt, though hitherto all attempts to punish him had failed, yet it was so notoriously certain to be made a party question, that when the magistrates assembled they confessed that they were not impartial enough to hear the case, and agreed to refer it to some magistrate of another district. Even then the two parties amongst the magistrates could not agree to whom to refer it, and at last were reduced to the expedient of selecting three magistrates’ names by lot.