are perhaps the most English of all in their way of thinking, but they are also by far the most narrow-minded.  For pure Philistinism I don’t think I know any town that equals it.  Shut up in their own little corner, they imagine themselves more select than Sydney and Melbourne circles, because they are necessarily smaller.  And yet for kind-heartedness these gossip-loving Philistines are not easily to be surpassed.  As long as things go well with you they will talk against you; but no set of people are less open to the charge of neglecting friends in misfortune.

Class relations are, on the whole, excellent; and this is the more to the credit of the lower classes, because the plutocracy is utterly selfish in character, and does not interest itself in those social duties, which are proving so effectual a prop to the nobility and landed gentry of England.  A certain animosity subsists between the squatters or pastoral lessees and the selectors who purchase on credit from Government blocks of land, which were formerly let to squatters.  At times this breaks out in Parliament or at elections, but in spite of a determined attempt by a section of the Victorian press to pit the ‘wealthy lower orders’ against the horny-handed sons of the soil, class feeling rarely runs high for any length of time.  The reason is, that the working-class are too well off for the occasional high-handed proceedings of the rich to affect them sensibly.  For an agitation to be maintained there must be a real grievance at the bottom of it; and the only grievance that the Australian democrat can bring forward is, that having obtained the necessaries, he cannot without extra labour obtain also the luxuries of life.

From figures I have already given as to rents, wages, and prices in general, you will have gathered that the cost of living is, broadly speaking, cheaper than in England as regards the necessities of existence, but dearer in proportion to the complexity of the article.  Anything that requires much labour, or that cannot readily be produced in the colony, is, dearer; but, on the other hand, it should be remembered that money is more easily obtainable.  Protectionist duties and heavy freights form an effectual sumptuary tax; and as most of the duties are ad valorem, first-class articles are heavily handicapped, and a premium put upon the importation of shoddy.  The wine-drinker finds that he has to pay ten shillings a gallon on all he drinks, which should certainly entice him to drink good wine; but the only practical result discoverable is the small quantity of wine drunk as compared with beer and spirits.  If few people keep carriages, there are buggies innumerable in every town; and for every man who keeps a horse in England, there are, proportionately to the population, ten in Australia.