Within five miles of all the larger towns in the colony, the Act provides there shall be a block of land containing at least 10,000 acres, surveyed, and divided into farms containing from 40 to 320 acres each. It is further provided, that these "Agricultural Reserves" shall always be kept extended to 5,000 acres a-head of the demand.

Persons purchasing forty acres must pay £40 in land orders, or cash, for the fee-simple of the land, but are then allowed to lease three times as much as they have thus purchased, at the nominal rent of sixpence an acre, a year, for five years, with pre-emptive right of purchase of the whole, or any portion of the leased part, at the end of that period, or at any time during the interval. In other words, persons may take up a farm of 160 acres, paying a fourth of the money at once, and having credit for the remaining three-fourths for five years, using their land orders in payment, as far as they will go, to their full nominal value as so much money. The conditions are, occupancy, and that the land be fenced round in eighteen months. These conditions, and the restriction of the quantity any single person may hold on each reserve to 320 acres, being intended for the protection of the actual farmer, by preventing the capitalist from purchasing large blocks for the purpose of mere speculation, a system which has hitherto tended to maintain a high price, and thus to discourage the settlement of the land on a large scale, by the actual farmer, in the Australian colonies.

The Queensland emigration regulations also provide, that persons paying the passages of others, not members of their own families, but engaged as their own servants, at "current rates" of wages in the colony, and engaged by a form issued from the Queensland Government Emigration Office in London, shall be entitled to claim an £18 land order for each adult thus introduced, two children between four and fourteen counting as one adult.

Under this provision, British Cotton Companies taking out their own servants, would claim an £18 land order for their introduction; more than sufficient to cover the cost of their passage to the colony.

The part of the Act providing for the introduction of labour generally, giving a claim to an £18 land order to persons having paid the passages of others, not members of their own families. to the colony. is limited, by the regulations, to persons of certain occupations, thus securing the class of labour most required in Australia. These must be farmers' labourers, gardeners, mechanics, such as carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, &c., and female domestic servants; and such persons must have made application in the prescribed form to the Queensland Government Emigration Office. Shipowners taking out this class of persons, under the immediate direction and control of the Queensland Government, are thus the only persons entitled to claim land orders, except those who pay the full passage for members of their own families, or their own hired servants.

Having been commissioned by the Queensland Government to

carry out the emigration thus provided for by the Colonial Act, I have by degrees organised a system which brings its provisions into successful operation. Persons of the classes I have named are accepted for an assisted passage by the payment of £8 per head (adult), or £4 for female domestic servants. I am also giving free passages to a limited number of single females, being domestic servants, and to married couples without children. Neither free nor assisted passengers are entitled to land orders on their arrival in the colony. These must all have submitted certificates of good moral character, and efficiency in their callings, at the Queensland Office; and have been passed there in the form now authorised by the Colonial Government. On their arrival in the colony they are not required to give any equivalent for assistance received, but are fully at liberty to hire with any one they like, and are entitled to the full and undivided reward of their own labour.

Persons who pay their own full passages are entirely free from any restriction as to occupation. Those paying the steerage rate of passage, £17, receive an £18 Land Order Warrant from the Queensland office before embarkation: those paying an intermediate rate, £20, or anything above this, receive Land Order Warrants to the amount of £30 per adult, in the same way.

The arrangements for securing the comfort, health, and safety of the passengers going to the colony are very carefully made. The ships must be first-class vessels, the minimum space allotted to each person is fixed by the Passenger Act, the dietary scale is more liberal than that provided by the Act. Medical officers of experience are appointed at the Queensland Government Emigration Office, being liberally paid, and entirely responsible to the local Government. They are appointed, as in Her Majesty's Commissioners' ships, as SurgeonSuperintendents, and are wholly responsible for the maintenance of discipline, and the observance of morality amongst the passengers, having also the control of the subordinate officers. Three matrons, . a schoolmaster, and other subordinate officers are also appointed immediately, or, by permission, at the Queensland office. A library of carefully chosen books is now supplied to each ship for the use of all passengers.

The success of the Queensland land order system of emigration may be estimated by the fact, that upwards of 13,000 persons had gone out under its provisions, within two years from the commencement of its operation in Great Britain, besides several thousands still being introduced under the old system, by the imperial Emigration Commissioners. A proportionate amount of capital is also finding its way to the colony, a great number of persons taking money with them. The pastoral and agricultural interests of the colony are rapidly advancing, and the results of the system are likely to be fully equal to those contemplated by its establishment. Out of the large number of persons who have gone to Queensland some have been disappointed, and have sent back a gloomy account of the colony, but these cases have been comparatively few. The bulk have

readily found profitable employment almost immediately, and wages are very little if at all reduced.

With respect to the class of persons needed in Queensland, and the qualifications required for their success, it is almost unnecessary here to add anything. Capitalists having money to invest by loan, or in sheep farming, or cotton growing-small capitalist-farmers, intending to cultivate their own land-farm-labourers, mechanics, such as before named, and female domestic servants, are the classes needed. Persons of education, but understanding no trade, and having little or no capital, cannot expect to succeed. Clerks, shopmen, and shopkeepers, are not wanted. Professional men find but a limited field for their talents in the colony. The qualifications essential to success everywhere in Australia are patient perseverance, a manly courage, not easily alarmed at temporary difficulties, health and strength to labour, and the strictest temperance. The possession and exercise of these qualities always insure success, the realisation of a competence, and frequently of wealth, in Australia.

The form of government in Queensland, as in all the Australian colonies, is very liberal. There is little taxation; the necessaries, and even the comforts, of life are little more expensive than in Great Britain. The wages of labour are high. Mechanics earn about 10s. a day. Farm labourers, £35 to £45 a year, besides board and lodging. Female domestic servants from £18 to £30 a year in the house.

A very liberal system of primary education is established in Queensland, bringing a thoroughly good English education within the reach of every person residing in most of the towns and villages, at a very small cost. The Grammar Schools Bill also makes liberal provision for the establishment of a very superior class of schools, wherever the inhabitants of the larger towns choose to avail themselves of its enactments.

The social and religious condition of the colony is, perhaps, very superior to that for which we frequently obtain credit in the estimation of most persons on this side of the globe. It must be remembered, that when transportation was discontinued to New South Wales, in 1840, the convicts were removed from Moreton Bay, and the population of Queensland has no admixture of the convict element. The statistics of criminal courts show that there is as little crime in New South Wales as in England, and less in Queensland. In the large towns the Sabbath is well observed, the number of churches in Brisbane, the capital, is large in proportion to the population, and when I left, two years since, there was said to be seataccommodation in the places of worship for every soul in the city; and I believe there were as many churches as public-houses in the place. In the country there is less provision for religious instruction, but I believe that most of the "Bush towns "have now a church and a regular minister, and many of the clergy frequently visit the stations in the country in the week, preaching the Gospel and administering the ordinances of religion.

One of the very first enactments of the first session of the Queensland Parliament was, that the Houses of the Legislature should be opened by prayer. This was carried almost unanimously, although such a motion had been repeatedly rejected in the other Australian colonies, and Queensland is, I believe, the only one of the British dependencies in Australia where the example of Britain is followed by the opening of both the Legislative Chambers by this acknowledgement of the necessity of the Divine guidance in their deliberations.

One of the earliest measures of the first session of Parliament, was the abolition of State aid to religion. It was believed that religion would be better sustained by the supporters of the several churches in the colony, if left entirely to the voluntary contributions of its friends. The event has, I believe, fully borne out this expectation. Social distinctions, of a sectarian character, are almost unknown, a liberal and catholic spirit generally prevails, and there is, perhaps, no locality, either in the United Kingdom or in any part of the world, where a greater liberality is displayed in the support of churches and religious ordinances, than in the new Australian colony of Queensland.

It is impossible, I think, carefully to ponder the wonderful history of our Australian colonies, especially during the last fifteen years, without seeing that there are great and gracious designs of Providence to be accomplished in the speedy population of this great Island continent, which are full of promise for the future.

Every ship-load of our own people going to Australia or New Zealand, may, I think, be viewed as the earnest and pledge of the development of the extraordinary resources of the Southern Hemisphere, which is not only pregnant with the greatest glory to the British Crown, but is full of hope for the world, and the interests of humanity at large. The extinction of the curse of slavery in America, the immense extension of the commerce, wealth, and power of Britain, and the spread of knowledge, liberty, and pure Christianity. in the world, are intimately connected with the question of the rapid colonisation of the great Australian continent exclusively by a virtuous, European, and chiefly British population.

The Influence of Emigration on the Social Condition of the Highlands. By the REV. THOMAS MCLAUCHLAN, A.M. THE emigration of the Highland population commenced about the middle of last century. It has continued ever since to proceed steadily, and there are perhaps as many Highlanders and descendants of Highlanders in North America as are to be found in their native country. The causes which led to the removal of so large a body of the Highland people were very fully stated in a work published about the year 1805, by the then Earl of Selkirk, who was engaged

at the time in securing settlers for an extensive territory of which he had become the owner in British North America. The work is styled, "Observations on the Present State of the Highlands of Scotland, with a view to the Causes and probable Consequences of Emigration." The work was answered in a pamphlet of very decided ability by Mr. Robert Brown, at that time Sheriff Substitute of the Western district of Inverness-shire. But Lord Selkirk's causes remained untouched, and may to a large extent be held as indicating what led to so extensive a removal of the Highland population. From this and other sources, it may be gathered that the suppression of the Rebellion in 1745-6 of the Highlanders in favour of Charles Edward, with the consequent legislation of the British Parliament, originated to a large extent this movement. Previous to that event the power of a Highland chief depended on the number of men he could raise. War of one kind or other was his occupation, and his success in it depended largely on the force which he had at his command. The changes introduced after 1745 led to an entirely different state of things. The clan system was virtually uprooted in the abolition of heritable jurisdictions, or the right possessed by chiefs of administering criminal law, and the whole of the Highlands were brought under the same legal system with the rest of the empire. One great effect of this was that money and not men became the most valuable return which property could make, and as a necessary consequence, rents came to be looked after, in a way hitherto quite unusual. The process was slow but certain. Lands rose in money value. A price was laid upon them which, although now utterly inadequate, was then looked upon as exorbitant, and large bodies of the people, in fear of utter ruin, and altogether unused to such a state of things, began to seek their way to America. There is considerable reference to this movement in Dr. Samuel Johnson's account of his journey to the Hebrides. The stout old moralist was firmly opposed to it. He looked upon it as a weakening of the nation, by draining away its people, and as a feeding the strength of a people who might one day become the foes of Britain. The Highlands, he thought, should, even at some cost to the nation, be made a nursery for British soldiers. At the same time there is no cause of wonder in a people like the Highlanders then becoming alarmed at a process which converted them from being the proud supporters of the power and dignity of a chief, whose glory, ancestral and personal, was reflected on themselves, into mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, whose value was to be estimated not by their skill and courage in war, but by the number of pounds shillings and pence that could be extracted from them as rent. The importance of such a change in its bearing upon their own social welfare was not likely to be manifest at first to an impulsive people, more accustomed to act than to think, and with but few of the materials for accurate thought at their disposal. Between 1745 and the close of the century, the emigration from the Highlands, chiefly to what is now the United States, was very extensive, one of the colonies having