Is a dreadful evil, being a kind of land piracy. None but back settlers, it is true, are exposed to its burnings, rapes, and massacres; but these are as much British subjects as the inhabitants of Sydney or of Downing Street. And, if the inhabitants of towns escape those horrors, they are liable to be murdered in a quiet way, and their property is exposed to every kind of depredation. Their actual losses by robbery, including the expense and loss of time occasioned by prosecutions, are very great. * * * * * The concluding observations on "the extension of Britain," and her colonial interests, are in a forcible and liberal tone, but as they take rather too political a turn for our pages, we recommend the anxious reader to the volume itself, which is altogether the production of an original thinker and an impartial writer. * * * * * SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS * * * * * THE CRUISE OF H.M. SHIP TORCH. _A Fragment_. I was the mate of the morning watch, and, as day dawned, I had amused myself with other younkers over the side, examining the shot holes and other injuries sustained from the fire of the frigate, and contrasting the clean, sharp, well-defined apertures, made by the 24 lb. shot from the long guns, with the bruised and splintered ones from the 32 lb. carronades; but the men had begun to wash down the decks, and the first gush of clotted blood and water from the scuppers fairly turned me sick. I turned away, when Mr. Kennedy, our gunner, a good steady old Scotchman, with whom I was a bit of a favourite, came up to me--"Mr. Cringle, the captain has sent for you; poor Mr. Johnstone is fast going, he wants to see you." I knew my young messmate had been wounded, for I had seen him carried below after the frigate's second broad-side; but the excitement of a boy, who had never smelled powder fired in anger before, had kept me on deck the whole night, and it never once occurred to me to ask for him, until the old gunner spoke.