My object in the following work has been to place the reader, as much as possible, in my own position whilst collecting the material for it. To let him see, feel, and draw his conclusions, as far as I could enable him, as fully and fairly as I did myself. I found myself in one of the most noble dependencies of England,—in a country which one day must become a great and populous one, and that at a crisis unexampled in history,—new, strange, and without an exact precedent. I saw that the position into which I had thus stepped created a great national duty; and I determined to discharge it faithfully. As I had no interest in the questions involved,—except such as are the interests of every British subject,—and no purpose to serve but a patriotic one, I resolved to state simply, fully, and without fear or favour, what fell under my notice. If, therefore, my plain speaking shall, as it probably may, give pain occasionally to individuals, I can only plead a most sincere desire to avoid such annoyance; but that, without an honest and candid exposition of prominent parts, I could not give to the whole portraiture that truth which the most vital interests, both of the colony and the mother-country, demand at this moment.

The condition of our Australian colonies is singular and anomalous beyond conception; and what is not the less extraordinary is, that it is almost totally unknown at home.