LETTER THIRTY.
Sydney,
My Dear Sister,
Your letter dated March 28th, 1842, was received, with four newspapers, about a month ago, at which time (as you will have learned by Clarinda's answer) your former letter of the date November 22nd, 1841, had not come to hand. It has, however, now reached us by the emigrant ship Theresa, which arrived a few days ago, after a passage of eight months from Plymouth. These two letters lay before us a frightful picture of affliction which you must have suffered during the last severe winter, and our grief receives additional bitterness from the reflection that we were at the same time having comparative ease and happiness, surrounded by all the luxuriant beauty of an Australian summer. But I feel it will be some comfort to you to know we have been exempted by a kind Providence from sufferings which we would gladly have shared to alleviate. For the last two years we have enjoyed a state of almost uninterrupted health, while the emoluments of "my situation have procured us many comforts, though we have hardly yet recovered from the difficulties of our first year in the colony. At the present time my income (which is always fluctuating) is not sufficient for our support, in consequence of the stagnation of the shipping interests at Sydney, which, together with all other mercantile transactions, wear a deplorable aspect. Insolvency, like some fearful epidemic, is daily discovering itself in some new place, and all kinds of goods (British goods in particular) are being sacrificed every day, at considerably less than their invoice value in England. There are no pawnbrokers in Sydney, but there are auctioneers who serve the necessitous in a similar manner, with this difference, that the man who sends his goods to the pawnbrokers has a hope (which too frequently is never realised) of redeeming them, while he whose goods go to the auction mart knows at once that they are gone from him for ever. I saw carpenters' hand-saws sold at one of these sales not long since at 1s. 6d. each. Mechanics and labourers in Sydney are glad to obtain employment now at wages 40 or 50 per cent, lower than they were receiving a year or eighteen months back, and their money at the week's end is in many instances uncertain.
Nearly all provisions are, however, now at very moderate prices; bread is fourpence the 2 lb. loaf, and beef and mutton fourpence per pound, but house rent is excessively high.
You must not infer from what I have said that we are here in any danger of starving, for bad as things are at present I believe they are so much worse in England that I wish you were all in safety here. I ought to state that the great cause of an overabundance of labour now in Sydney is the objection which men feel to going into the interior, for, seeing that 'life has ample room' in the country, there can be no fear of a general dearth of employment for a hundred years to come, provided the amount of capital be proportionate to that of labour.
As yet I am quite unsettled in my purpose for the future, or whether or not I shall remain in the colony, but I hope I shall be more decided in the course of a year or two. I am beginning to sigh for a permanent home. It may be fixed in the immense wilds of this wonderful country, or amidst the native haunts of the New Zealand savage; or it may be in the beautiful and fertile island of Otaheite, or in Chili, or Peru, or it may be among the settlements of Malacca, or in South Africa, or the United States of America; but I am Bad to think it is not likely to be in my native land, though I still must hope to lay my bones in old England. As soon as I am able to write you more explicitly of my views for the future I will be sure to do so. And I trust I shall have it in my power before long to repay your love and kindness to me in past years. Tell our beloved mother, should this reach you while she is allowed to remain with you, that the prospect before her children in this strange country is fair for the cloudy times we live in, and assure her of our unabated affection. Tell her and my dear father and my sisters and brothers, and my beloved wife's friends also, that, though every other feeling may be blunted by continual contact with the world, our love for them will receive new vigour from trouble and privation, from strife and sorrow. Long before you can read this I trust we shall receive a happier account from you—of health banishing all traces of sickness, and of suffering and anxiety giving place to domestic comfort and peace. And now, my dear sister, for the present 'farewell.'