WHAT FORBES THINKS OF US.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 1017, 9 August 1883, Page 3

WHAT FORBES THINKS OF US.

In an article on Australian characteristics, contributed to a Sydney contemporary, Mr Archibald Forbes frankly confesses that when he left England he was - under the impression that Melbourne was in South Australia. He knows belter now, but he reckons it among the disgraces ot Britain that the great Mother Country knows so little of her lusty offspring under the Southern Cross. Proceeding to dilate on the characteristics of the colonies, he says, “You have no life in Australia that corresponds at all to the life in one of the great European centres— London or Paris for instance. Nowhere are you more than merely locally, or al the furthest provincially, metropolitan,' ; Even your greatest cities inures something still of the big village aspect.” But in rural Australia there is no life of that bonnie, phlegmatic, vegetating type which one recognises in all the by-ways of Europe. Our rural classes, he thinks, are a pushing, energetic, well-informed set of people. They do not believe in standing still, or sitting down contented with their lot, whatever that may be. They are constantly striving to better themselves, and in Australia, Mr Forbes tells us, there is no lot to which a purposeful man cannot attain. He believes the Australians are honestly proud of their country; of what they have done to make it great; of its vast resources and natural beauties. He sees nothing to object to in' this kind of “ blow,” and of the other kind—the baleful, detestable, ignoble “ blow,” that “ stinks of brass,” his experience is that Australians are singularly guiltless. Arrogant snobbery he has not detected in the colonies, but of that he may not be a very good judge. Politics he declares to be the weak point of Australia. A member goes to Parliament not so much accredited to legislate for the good of the commonwealth as to agitate, struggle, intrigue, bully, for the constituency that sends him up. He is not an item in the aggregate of a Legislature; he is a delegate from Little Peddlington or Bungorooboora. .Mr Forbes has no faith in federation. It is a chimera, and may be relegated to the limbo of indefinite immensities. He has a good word to say of social life among us. The female element is as pure as it is sweet and gracious. Among the male element decorum is stringent. He complains, however, of a want on the part of the men of that graceful courtesy towards the other sex, which it is always a pleasure to recognise. There is nothmg either very new or very deep in Mr Forbes’ article; but, as the remarks of one who is a pretty shrewd observer of life and manners, and who has seen a good deal of the world, it is not without some; little interest.