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    THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.

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    I T must have been a severe blow to the pride of every patriotic Englishman , however vehement his own outcry for an abandonment of all fratricidal strife , Avhen George the Third at last recognised the independence of his rebellious American provinces . The Seating and baffling sustained in the struggle , the useless sacrifice of so many millions of pounds sterling and thousands of human lives , must have been , mortifying enough to all ; but to ' those who piqued themselves upon their superior knowledge of statecraft the loss must have appeared almost irreparable . Those were days in which tire ingeniously absurd economical system , which still tinds ? so blind an acceptance on the continent of Europe , was received . Smith had

    and adopted in England as infallible . -Dr . Adam , indeed , commenced his vigorous assault upon it , but his theories were assented to only bya few -un influential persons , and were as yet pooh-poohed by men in authority . In that system colonies had a great place . Not for any of the reasons which now lead us to desire outlets for the energy and industry of our people , but for . thq . advantages which the mother country •' could , as it was supposed , contrive to get out of the colonists . A colony was considered an . outlying estate , ; from which a' large profit might-be made— -a market for the manufactures of the mother country , and the means of supplying it at its own price with commodities which it might sell

    to the rest of the world for whatever it pleased to ask . So the colonies were carefully shut out from intercourse with all other parts of'the world , and specially taken care of sis ¦ milch cows to be drained by England . What , ' then ; must have been the apprehensions of " sagacious politicians at this loss of the best anl richest plantations England possessed ? We may be sure they thought her . ' commerce in danger of almost total extinction . Little could they anticipate that the trade of En gland with these ; rebellious dependencies would exceed , in -less .. ' than seventy years , the whole trade she had carried on with the world at the most flourishing period known to them ; and if any one had predicted

    such a result they would have set him down as a harebrained ent-lnisiast . Some consolation , however , they lni ^ ht have found in the discovery of that vast Australian continent , upon which , some five or six years later , a settlement was to lie made . Small consolation ; for * n" 6 one could have anticipated that a possession which , in 1788 , was only deemed good enough for a convict establishment , would , even in the lifetime of the young men of that clay , possess a population as great as that of the lost provinces , and promise a development of wealth and power upon a scale never before attained by any people . Yet such is the promise our Australian colonies now give . Settled only in 178 S —if a convict establishment can be called a settlement—long

    treated as receptacles for the dregs of English criminality , separated by the immense distance from the ' observation and attention of the public , neglected and discouraged by the Government ,, they have sprung , in the course of some tea years , mainly through the influence of that potent magnet , gold , to a marvullous rank and prosperity , If gold , however , has given them their great start , -their future does not depend upon their ability to continue supplying it . Their rich plains require only labour to produce an -abundance of commodities , tor which a demand will exist as long as mankind requires food and clothing . The supply of that labour may now be considered assured , an , d with it the prosperity of these colonies .

    Avith all its present wealth and prospect ot more , , now-: ever , shows no s . ignsofany desire to break oft'its connexion with the old country . Fat and iiusty as it has waxed ,, it . Ins not put forth eluiins to be ' allowed to stand by itself . It does not want to ce lebrate a Fourth of July with screaming orations nguinst the tyranny of Great Britain , and ranting apostrophes to its own greatness . The colonists are content with an anniversary of a very different character . They celebrate the 20 th of January , the day upon which England planted its first sorry spttlement on that groat continent . An exceedingly unpretending anniversary ^ dignified by no pretentious declaration of rights borrowed froni ^ KouasiflAU * and practically denying , like that great apostle of

    French liberty , the rights of all persons , weak or foolish enough to be slaves , but one which will every year grow in interest nnd importance , and by its celebration prove a pledge of firm alliance botwecii the matnt pntchrd and her some clay yet distant , however , filiapiilohHor . Why is . this P Englishmen ore just ns independent and free how ns eighty years ago . Thrown upon a distant land ,, they nro ns jealous of their rights and liberties ns were ever the-PuriCnns or their descendants . The answer is not \\ wnV to find ,, and it is one for which the present age , so much abused to the odvuntngo of its predecessors , may take some small credit . Wo have left the Australians no . cause to desire th 6 n . ' indopen-

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    eveiy part of which is equally necessary to her welfare and her greatness . That the Foreign-office should allow Mr . Lowtheb so . to instruct the Parliament and the people , is as extraordinary as the industry which neither he nor . Foreignofiice comprehends is wonderful . Like other politicians , he and they form their estimate of trade from their interference with it ; and as the internal trade of England has happily been thought beneath their notice— -to which we owe its extent and healthfulness— it seems to them , better acquainted with intermeddling abroad than with the growth of freedom at home , to be secondary and unimportant . Our Government has allowed our trade , as it has allowed our press , to grow unlicensed into greatness and utility , and both are now the . foremost promoters of civilization . Then , She . Foreign-office , per Mr . Lowtiier , informs the Parliament that " the quantities of merino wool brought to the two principal fairs of Kharkoff and Poltawa , in 1858 , were computed to amount to 550 , 0 00 , 000 poods . The whole production * of merino wool ( in Kussia ) may be taken at 800 , 000 , 000 poods , and of common wool three or four times that amount . " He therefore represents the production of common wool in Russia to be at . least 2 , 400 , 000 , 000 jjoods . A pood is 36 lbs .,, and therefore , according to Mr . Lowther , Russian merino wool is produced to the extraordinary amount of 28 , 800 ^ 000 , 000 lbs ., and common avooI to the still more extraordinary amount of 86 , 400 , 000 , 000 lbs . The more moderate estimate of Tegoborski is 137 , 500 , 000 lbs . for the total growth of wool of all kinds in European Russia , which con tains eleven-twelfths of all the population of the Empire . . This estimate includes all the merino wool . produced . Yast as may be the flocks of 5 , 000 , 000 people in Asiatic Russia , they will , hardly supply 80 , 262 , 500 , 000 lbs ., to make up the amount stated by Mr , LoWTiircit . We profess our utter inability to guess at what he means , or at the source of his mistake . . We . leave the riddle , ' therefore , to be solved ' -by ' the . Foreign-office , when it has learned that the internal trade of England is of more than secondary importance . ' In another article we have made some use of the information ¦ in ¦ ' these reports ; but we . could hot , like our contemporaries ., pass over these blunders without . ¦ cau tioning the public against them . The Secretaries of Legation who have made these reports ; the Foreign-office ,- which has published them uncorrected ; the printer , who has , allowedterrors of facts and language to pass which would ensure the dismission of " the raader " from the office of any-. morning paper , put to press far in the night in breathless haste , are all to blame . Who is most to blame we cannot tell , but the present Foreign Minister is the man whom the Parliament should call to account . Let him divide the blame amongst his predecessors , his subordinates , and the printer he employs . To find fault with administrators lias , however , lately gone out of fashion . We have had competitive examinations established to secure perfect service , and any shortcomings in Minister- ? are , by their patrons in the press , contrasted with faults and errors in the mercantile community , and because it is sullied , for them is claimed the brilliancy of eminent virtue . But while no member of that , community which now issues in the shape of circulars multitudinous reports , full of valuable information , could make such gross blunders as those we have .. pointed out , it makes no pretence to teach and guide the ' nation , and derives neither power nor emolument far protending to perform such an important duty . The standard , therefore , by which these classes are to be . tried is very different ; and errors , mistakes , and even frauds detected amongst merchants , is no sort of excuse for similar faults in a class which only deserves the pre-eminence it claims by being exempt from them . An avowed disregard of niceties , such as Lord Mai ^ iesbur ^ has for grammar , as too mean for great functions , would seem to bo the rulit of the Foreign-office ; It is , however , an old story thnt , don ' t care in trifles followed out , brings on disgrace , nnd may end in ruin . The facts emoted are only specimens of what occurs throughout our administration . For months , and even years , the nation has been fretted by apprehensions arising from a want of seamen ; audit is not possible to read Lord Dundonai / d ' s Memoirs , without attaining a , deep ami profound conviction that the whole evil arises from the continued misconduct of our ignorant , conceitedly obstinate and arrogant Admiralty . By the Foreign department ( some of the errors of which wo have exposod ) the nation is continually involved in difficulties with foreign countries , and not uufrequently in woks ; thnt no reasoning can > ' justify , or even defend , by any principle that wo respect . Against ignorance , mistake ' s , and oupidity in individuals wo are always and cnongh on , our gnnrxl ; for Foreign-offices and Admiralties we have a traditiprinl reveronco , which , after numberless examples of deploroblo errors and misconduct in them , is now more disgraceful to us than the derided fetiche worship of the

    poor Africans is to them . They have never had proofs that it is iiseless and wrong ; we continue a worship often demonstrated to be false . . . • . '

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    HO The Lender and Saturday Analyst . [ Feb . 4 , ] 860 .

    The Australian Colonies.

    THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 4, 1860, page 110, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2332/page/10/