How shall men and women be got who will remain:--who will come to the place in order that they may live upon the land, and not simply making it a stepping-stone to some rush for gold? It can only be done by making the land attractive; and the great attraction offered by land is ownership. Let a man understand that he can have land of his own and live upon it, owing rent to no one and service to no one, subject to no bondage, with no one to order his coming in and his going out, with no tasks laid on his shoulders by another, that he can be altogether free from the dominion of a master, and you open up to his mental eyes a view of life that is full of attraction. This new home, that is so unlike the home that he is to leave, is indeed far across the waters, in another world, away from the comrades and circumstances of his life amidst which he feels that, though wretched, he is secure. He feels that if he go he can never return; and he hears vague, unsatisfactory, even contradictory accounts of the new land. He knows that he is groping his way, and that, should he go, he will at last take a leap in the dark. Even with those among us who have many friends, the nature of whose life has taught us where to look for information, who can not only write but express in writing what we mean, who can not only read but know where to find the books that will teach us that we want to learn, there is felt to be much difficulty when the question arises whether we shall remove ourselves and our household gods to the new home that we call a colony, or whether we shall send a son to push his fortunes in the new country. To digest what we have learned and bring it all together so that we may act upon it safely is no easy task. What must it be to the working man whom some newspaper has reached, or some advertisement to emigrants; and who, in addition to this, has heard the vague surmises of his neighbour? He goes to the parson, or to the squire, or perhaps to his employer,--and is recommended to remain. The adviser hardly dares to say otherwise, and is probably himself impregnated with the patriotic idea that there is no place for an Englishman like England. For members of parliament, and men with £5,000 a year, or with prosperous shops in Cheapside,--for some even whose fortune is less brilliant than that,--England is a very comfortable home. No land can beat it. But for Englishmen in general, that is, for the bulk of the working population of the country, it is I think by no means the best place. A large proportion of our labouring classes cannot even get enough to eat. A still larger proportion are doomed so to work that they can think of nothing but a sufficiency of food. In all the Australian colonies, if a man will work the food comes easily, and he can turn his mind elsewhere. I do not assert that there is no poverty,--no distress. Even in Western Australia the government is obliged to maintain an establishment for paupers. But poverty is not