The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-10-26 00:00:00

pittance of
od to be all th

fiord to purchase of

et them
91 per

Weans, exported, in return,
the surplus he could afford to
luce. Every man, therefore, whom we

ice to become a Sydney col

a customer who ordered four times as much from us at
home as be would otherwise have done, and kept, in fact,

)f us at work to supply hi

In continuation of this view of ns subject, the lecturer
gave a brief but animated sketch of the British possessions
in different parts of the world, pointing out the leading
features in their history and present condition. He then
proceeded to classify them, observing that the whole of
the fifty colonies and dependencies of Gnat Britain, in
I that had ever been founded yet,
First, the

of four c

anada and A°

toral a

thirdly, the mining colonies, in which class we had no such
prominent examples as the Spaniards had in Peru, but of
which our operations in the copper mines of South Aus-
tralia and the gold mines of Sydney and Victoria afforded
sufficient examples. And, lastly, there were naval and
military colonies, such as Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, Ber-
muda, St. Helena, and Hong-Kong. The pastoral and
agricultural colonies stood evidently first in importance.
They were branches of the English nation, preparing the
way, as America had already done, to the existence of an
English-speaking people, before whose numbers and
extent the boasted hundreds of millions by whom the
Chinese empire was peopled would sink into insignificance.
The Indies, as trading colonies, might be more important
sources of present wealth ; but to benefit by them a man
must have a purse in his pocket. Not so the pastoral and
agricultural colonies: all they asked was hands ; and every
man whose hands were lacking work enough to earn him
a living here might look to find it there. The mining
colonies, again, could only vie for a transient period with
the intrinsic importance of the others. Sooner or later
the supply of the metals must grow precarious or difficult
of access ; and then an iron age of hardship and grinding
poverty would supplant the golden beginnings of the early
settlers. The naval and military colonies were of no in-
trinsic importance to our national progress and prosperity.
They were, in truth, as turnpikes along the highways of
commerce, whereby colonies of another stamp might carry
to and fro their produce and their merchandise in security.
By them a thousand fierce and brutal forces still lurking
among the tribes of the earth were curbed into silence and
subjection ; so that we travelled almost unconscious of
their existence, unless sometimes aroused to wonder how
great must be the power of England to have enforced so
great a peace through the world.
Much skill had been used, of late years, so to found a
colony as to repel inferior and attract superior emigrants.
South Australia had led the way by charging £1 per acre
for waste lands, most of which used formerly to be given
away, or afterwards sold at 53. an acre, by the Crown.
This experiment succeeded so far that the Canterbury
Association had ventured further still by charging £3 an
acre for all land, and spending the proceeds in improve-
ments, not merely of a physical, but also of a moral, kind.
The consequence was that, already. in its second year, its
population outnumbered that of Western Australia in its
twenty-fourth year ; and, although settlers who under-
valued moral advantages would not go there to buy land,
those who really valued them were combining so ener-
getically together that the Parliamentary expenditure of
£240,000, which was necessary to keep Western Australia
alive, would never be wanted at all. Nearly £lOO,OOO,
contributed for the purchase of land, had already brought
the colony so rapidly onwards as to excite the surprise of
all persons of experience in colonizing who had seen it.
There, as elsewhere, hands, not heads, were wanted, and
the rate of wages indicated it to be a poor man's colony as
well as the others. But his chief sympathy arose from
the fact that a strong spirit of religion pervaded the whole
design. The great experiment was there being tried,
whether our Church could colonize as well as our nation ;
whether religion had not blessings in store which had not
yet been measured by the new colonists ; whether fresh
strength and spirit might not he lent to the colonizing
enterprize of England by preserving in all their integrity
the bonds of a common altar ?

There was the strongest inducement on the part of every
colony to attract the stream of emigration from England ;
and, on the other hand, it would appear to be the interest
of England to encourage the drain upon her population.
It secured itself from pauperism, as well as an increasing
market for all she produced, and an increasing supply for
all she required. The emigration of poor labouring men
had been much encouraged of late years by act of Parlia-
ment. Any ratepayer might obtain from the Poor-law
Commissioners printed forms which contained a resolu-
tion, to be passed by the parish, whereby a certain sum,
not exceeding that authorized by the act, could be appro-
priated to poor men desirous to emigrate. If there was
no objection to the emigrants who proposed themselves,
the Poor-law Commissioners would confirm the resolution
of the parish, and make an order for paying half the
passage-money for them as they left the port, and half
when they had accomplisued the voyage. But the chief
encouragement to labouring men was given by thecolonies
themselves, which spent large sums, through the Colonial
Laud and Emigration Commissioners, in aid of the
passage of approved emigrants. From every colony the
emigration-agents protested against persons who were not
really labourers being sent out, as experience had shown
that they would not betake themselves to hard labour, but
swelled the number of those who loitered unprofitably
about the towns. _

Dr. Gell touched upon the disastrous failure of the set-
tlement at Swan River, and quoted a passage from the
address of the colonists to Governor Fitzgerald, which
produced a marked sensation upon his auditcry. He also
commented in strong terms upon a glaring abuse perpe-
trated in the Scotch colony of Otago, where a "judge of
the supreme court" had been appointed, at £BOO per an-
num, the criminal business of the colony amounting to
one prisoner in the course of three years.
The next course of lectures will be on " The Astronomy
of Scripture," by the Rev. St. Vincent Beechey, rector
-* I of Worsley.

PITCAIRN'S ISLAND.

Amongst the paisengers by the Orinoco, is Mr. Nobbs,
from Pitcairn's Island, where he has been residing for
the last twenty-five years, acting the part of pastor and
teacher to the descendants of the mutineers of the Bounty.
He left the island on the 11th August last, in her Ma-
jesty's ship Portland, Rear-Admiral Morseby, and has
come to England for the purpose of being ordained, the
chaplain of the Portland remaining there during his
absence. The account given by Mr. Nobbs of the state
of society in the community is very interesting :
" He is the bearer of despatches from Admiral Morseby,
in the Pacific Ocean, and his object in coming to Eng-
land is to obtain some assistance for the religious educa-
tion of the people of Pitcairn's Island, and to induce the
government to allow English ships of war to visit the
island oftener than they now do. The individual alluded
to is about sixty yeah of age, and about twenty-five years
ago visited Pitcairn, and was allowed to remain on the
island as a religious teacher and to practise medicine. He
is almost the only stranger ever allowed to remain at Pit-
cairn, and to be considered as one of the community.
The inhabitants of the island in question numbered, when
he left, eighty-six females and eighty-eight males, who
are nearly all descended of the Bounty mutineers, and
three Tahitan women. They are still remarkable for
their moral and religious character, chiefly through the
teaching and example -of Adams, the chief mutineer. A
president of the community is elected every year, but he
has little to do. There is no penal code, for the whole
community live as one family, and, having no money, and
prohibiting strong drinks, there is no temptation or in duce-
ment to crime. All the land is held in common, and no
one is allowed to trade for himself. The coin in
the island amounts to about eighteen dollars' value.
If every waste spot were cultivated, Pitcairn, which is
about 4i miles in circumference, would maintain about
500 persons. The climate is good. The thermometer
never rises to above 80 degrees, nor falls below 55. The
men and boys all bear arms, and they could defend the
approaches to the island against a thousand fighting men.
No ship can approach without a pilot. The inhabitants
are not so robust as the English, nor do they live so long.
They subsist chiefly on yams, potatoes, and cocoa nuts.
Once a week they taste fish or flesh, which they obtain by
fishing and killing the goats on the island. They chew
and smoke tobacco, which they obtain from American
whalers which visit them for supplies of fresh water, yams,
and potatoes. The island would grow Indian corn and
tobacco, but neither of these is cultivated, because it would
impoverish the ground. Tobacco grows wild, but it is
rooted up as a weed. There are no springs, and the water
obtained is rain-water, which is caught in reservoirs. An
English ship-of-war calls at the island about once a year.
A number of American whalers visit it, and through them
the inhabitants get supplies to satisfy their simple wants,
and learn the news of the world. They seldom suffer any
stranger to live on their island. If any are shipwrecked
there, they are taken care of till the next vessel calls,
when they are sent away. Almost the first person the
Pitcairn inhabitant met at the Oriental Hotel, at South-
ampton, on Saturday, was a gentleman whose cousin had
been shipwrecked at Pitcairn, had lived there a fortnight,
and was well remembered by the inhabitant. The latter
has left a wife and eleven children at Pitcairn. He has
been elected president of the island more than once. His
business in England will chiefly be with the Duke of
Northumberland and the Bishop of London, Hispresence
here will be the means of revealing some particulars of
one of the most curious and interesting episodes in the
history of human society."

THERE IS TO BE A BARRACK for 4000 men erected
at Pembroke, to protect the arsenal. The works on the
Stack Rock have been nearly completed ; the proposed
erection on Thorn Island is progressing ; and important
alterations have been made in the battery at Pater.