he
will soon find that he is in a condition to exchange toil for comfort,
and from the very first to combine tho two. This will be succeeded by
independence, not in the English sense of the word, but the
independence of being perfect master of his own time and actions,
having plenty of his own, and being under no obligations to others.
Many poor men make fortunes, and especially by the lottery of
gold-finding, in which the strong arm is superior to the clear head ;
but let not the poor man at home expect this: if he find it, so much
the better : and so much the sooner can he remit part of his wealth
home, to enable his still poor relations to join him, and again set up
the household gods in company.
To
prescribe to the labouring man what he can do on his arrival in the
colony is impossible. The writer who would so prescribe is a quack.
Suffice it that anything he cannot do he can learn, and be well paid
for it whilst learning. Next to gold, the produce of the country is
pastoral: in this the agricultural emigrant is skilled; but the fact of
not being skilled need not deter the veriest cockney from emigrating
with the intention of pursuing a pastoral life. Under the old system of
convictism, the favourite shepherds amongst the stock-farmers in New
South Wales were London pickpockets, for whom there was always a
contention, on account of their superior shrewdness and activity. The
London clerk, porter, mechanic, will make none the worse shepherd for
not having been transported. A late writer thus sums up the class of
shepherds in his district:—" An apothecary, a lawyer's clerk, three
sailors, a counting-house clerk, a tailor, a Jew, a Portuguese sailor,
a Cingalese, a barman, a gentleman's son, a broken-down merchant, a
former lieutenant in the East India Company's 'service, a gipsy, a
black fiddler, and. a dancing-master." The best shepherds were the
gentleman's son, the Jew, and the barman. And such men are liked better
than the regular-bred English shepherd, who has in general the two bad
qualities of never obeying orders, and always knowing better than his
master. No poor man, in any class of life, should
