Henry Parkes

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”