The Sun.
London, England, 1839-10-08 00:00:00

amassed property calculated to be worth upwards of
one hundred thousand pounds sterling. It was a matter
Of surprise to many inteliigent colonists, how such a
man could be allowed to remain so long ; but it would
appear that the rules of the celebrated Franklin, for
" reducing a great empire to a small one," were used
and adopted at the Colonial Department. The 16th
Rule seems to have been peculiarly attractive there, and
which runs thus—" If you are told of the existence of
discontent in any of your colonial possessions, do not
believe it ; and if any application be made to yeji.for the
redress of the grievances of any of your -colonial pos-
sessions, r .jest the prayer at once ; for if you grant that,
you may be asked for something more. Redress no
grievance, lest it should lead to a petition for the re-
moval of another cause of complaint. Believe only the
accounts which reach you from Governors, and others
officially connected with your colonies ; and treat any
statements in opposition to their accounts as the inven-
tion of demagogues, whom you should hang if you
could catch them, and thus tranquillize the colony."
By the foregoing means the North American colonies
were lost to Britain ; and the same degree of infatua-
tion seems still to prevail in administering the affairs of
the colonies. The statements of the most respectable
colonists, who offered to prove what they advanced,
were treated with contempt. Persons were thrust out
of office on the most frivolous pretences, for the purpose
of waking way for a train of relations and dependents.
The Colonial Secretary, Mr. Burnett, was dismissed
for selling his grant of land, which all the Government
officers, who got grants, disposed of in like manner.
Mr. Frankland, Surveyor-General, sold his grant, I
believe, of 2,560 acres for 1,5001. to Mr. Dry ; but the
reason it sold so high was, that, as Surveyor-General,
the best land was selected for him. The place of Mr.
Burnett was given to the -nephew-in-law of the late Go-
vernor, which he still retains : he has got two years'
leave of absence, and his place is supplied by Captain
Forster, Chief Magistrate of Police, another nephew-in-
law of the Colonel, and now acting Governor, ad inte-
rim. Another nephew, a Police Magistrate at Norfolk
Plains, Van Diemen's Land, has also got leave of ab-
sence for two years, with permission to retain half his
salary, two hundred pounds per annum, his substitute
in office being allowed the other two hundred pounds
per annum for performing his duty.
He is equally loud in his complaints against the
abuses in the sale of lands, and the ruinous system
of favouritism arising from defective regulations,
by which parties are allowed to attend the sales for
the purpose of extorting bribes as hush money, to
prevent their bidding against those persons who
set the land up for sale, and enormous tracts of
land are amassed, to the exclusion of new corners.
So much importance does he attach to this part of
his subject that he has devoted no less than forty-
five pages to the report of a trial of several of these
land sharks instituted by the Attorney-General
when they were all found guilty.
In Chapter V., on " The State of the Church,"
Mr. Mann expresses great alarm at the increase of
Popish priests in the colony, and quotes from a
loeal paper of December, 1838, the following
news on the subject :—" The Roman Catholic
religion is making fearful and rapid strides among our
ignorant and deluded population. On Sunday week
the Roman Catholics of Sydney held a meeting for
secular purposes. After the dismissal of the con-
gregation, Doctor Ullathorne, the Vicar General,
said, We have now twenty priests engaged in the
mission in New South Wales, beside the provision
for Van Diemen's Land. Eight divines are pre-
paring (in Sydney) to enter the field of labour, and
three others are equally making their preparations
in the College of Douai.' " In reference to this
subject, the author makes the following remarks :
" These priests are paid by the Government. When
they get one hundred adults in number, of emaneipists
and others, to set their names down as Catholics, the
priest procures .as much from Government as the no-
minal subscription amounts to. What a fine bonus on
proselytism !!!"
Now this is very unfair and very absurd. The
Protestant clergy have the same bonus, and if they
do not choose to take advantage of it, why make an
attack on the Government and the Catholics ? He
admits that no such success attended the mission of
the Bishop of the Established Church in 1836,
and why ? Because he was not accompanied by
that supply of ministers which the wants of the
colony required, insomuch that on the death of the
Rev. Mr: Hill, the incumbent of the Cathedral
Church of St. James, Sydney, he appointed a
Church missionary to officiate in his stead. This
misionary was one of the three clergymen con-
nected with New Zealand, against whom Dr. Lang
has made such grievous accusations in his work on
that country. Mr. Mann shows that the report
against the individual in question was totally un-
founded, that it was tra ed to an abandoned woman
and a drunken fellow, whom the missionary rebuked
for their improper conduct on board, and adds, " I
am convinced it was in ignorance of the foregoing
facts that Dr. Lang,' in his late work on New Ze-
aland, casts a slur on the character of ,"
Mr. Mann devotes, three chapters to South Aus-
tralia, and certainly gives no very flattering account
of the colony. The description of the entertain-
ment given by Colonel Gawler, the new Governor,
to the natives, is the most interesting part of the
notice ; and that the author has extracted from the
South Australian Gazette, a practice to which he
is sadly addicted, for more than half the work con-
sists of extracts. Of this, however, we have. no
reason to complain. The book is neatly got up,
contains several useful statistical documents, and is
accompanied by a very good map of Australia,
New Zealand, and the adjacent islands.

THE STEAM ENGINE EXPLAINED A...VD
ILLUSTRATED.
BY DIONTSIUS LARDNER, D. C.L.,
Taylor and Walton, London, 1839.
This work, now in the course of publication,
will form the seventh edition of " Dr. Lardner's
Treatise on the Steam Engine." It will be ex-
tended to twelve numbers, and as it is intended to
illustrate the great improvements which have taken
place in the various applications of steam, more
especially to navigation and railways, it will contain
a great variety of matter not included in any of the
previous editions. These improvements are pro.
gressing with railroad speed, and to an extent which
even the most sanguine, but a few years ago, never
anticipated. Long after the first edition was pub-
lished, Dr. Lardner almost laid it down as an axiom
that steam-ships could not cross the Atlantic, at
least for useful purposes ; and that the expense and
the difficulty of carrying a sufficient quantity of
fuel were such as to warrant him in treating the
scheme as impracticable. We have now three
steamers making the passage to New York and
back, with clock-work regularity ; two others are
ready to be launched ; and Government have enfeed
into contracts for conveying the mails by steam:-vessels
to almost every part of the Western World.., The
Great Western performs the home voyage punc-
tually within thirteen days, or at the rate •.of ten
miles per hour, and possibly, nay, probably,. before
this treatise is completed, the voyage will be.rnade.
in half the time. Dr. Lardner, then, will have to
commence his work anew, or publish an additional
number in the shape of a digest of the, new won-
ders of steam. The work, though necessarily con-
taining technical details and descriptions, chiefly
adapted to those engaged in engineering, is written
in a popular form, and suited to the general reader.
The following extract is a fair specimen. After
stating that the circumstances under which the
steam-engine is worked on a railway, are not favour-
able to the economy of fuel, he draws this remark-
able contrast :
" A train of coaches weighing about eighty tons, and
transporting two hundred and forty passengers with
their luggage, has been taken from Liverpool to Bir-
mingham, and back from Birmingham to Liverpool, the
trip each way taking about four hours and a quarter,
stoppages included. The distance between these places
by the railway is ninety-five miles. This double journe of
one hundred and ninety-five miles is effected by the mecha-
nical force produced in the combustion of a quarter of
a ton of coke, the value of which is six shillings. To
carry the same number of passengers daily between the
same places by stage coaches on a common road, would
require twenty coaches and an establishment of three
thousand eight hundred horses, with which the journey
in each direction would be performed in about twelve
hours, stoppages included."

ROBINSON CRUSOE. Parts I. and 11.
Strange, London, 1839.
We are glad to meet with our old friend Robin-
son Crusoe again, the favourite—.together with the
Barber in the " Arabian Nights," who was nick-
named " Silence" because he was eternally chat-
tering—of our childhood, and the esteßmed of our
maturer years. For how many amusing;follies is
not this same Crusoe answerable ? How many
lads has he not been the means of decoying froM
school, to the inexpressible horror of their fathers
and mothers who were rearing them to the counter,
or it may be, to the pulpit ; and had fondly hoped
that they would have turned out " respectable"
members of society—steady church-goers, and all
that sort of thing—like themselves ; but who having
read the magic pages of Defoe, had instantly taken
the pen from behind their ears, flung their Latin