The Evening Star THURSDAY, MAY 18, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2574, 18 May 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star THURSDAY, MAY 18, 1871.

Although statistical information, as a rule, is dry. reading, it ia at all times interesting when it sums to illustrate

the-commercial position of countries in the immediate neighborhood of our own. There is sometimes an unfortunate tendency to envy the inhabitants if they happen to be better oil than ourselves, instead of rejoicing in the fact that rich neighbors are generally good customers, that they cannot enjoy their wealth without diffusing it’ thus benefitting all with whom they trade. If only our artizms and agriculturists could realise this sound and universally applicable truth, we should hear no more nonsense about protection, and a great deal more about extension of trade. In a review of a work entitled the “ Industrial “ Progress of Now South Wales, the A nstTodusMU gives a brief sketch of that Colony’s resource's and progiess in 1870

With a superficial area of .323,4.37 square miles, and a coast line of about 800 miles, it enjoys a climate resembling that of the Cape Colony in Africa, of La Plata and Chili in South America, and of the South of Spam, Italy, and Greece in Eu rope. Its population is estimated approximately at 500,000 souls, of whom 140,000 are concentrated in Sydney and its suburbs; the city proper containing 90,000. The number of acres under cultivation is 470,753, of which nearly 44)00 were derotc'l to the growth of sug <r, ami a similar area to that.of the vin o . the live stock of the Colony includes 230,304 horses, 1,795,904 head of cattle, 14,989,023 sheep, and 175,921 pigs. Among its mineral resources arc gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, cinnabar, diamonds, coal, and petroleum shale. The oil produced from some of the last is described as being pronounced superior to the best American, oyer which it possesses this advantage, that it will not ignite at a temperature 10 degrees higher than the igniting point of the purest quality of the latter.

Notwithstanding this rich programme, the Government of New South Wales has always been in difficulties, mainly arising from the hap-hazard way in which colonizing has always been conducted. There are but 340 miles of railway completed, with 07 more in progress ; while there are 900 miles of main roads and 5,500 miles of electric telegraphs. As Sydney contains 90,000 inhabitants, and 50,000 more are in the immediate neighborhood, it follows that all this vast road system has been constructed for the purpose of bringing the remaining 360,000 into more or less direct communication with the capital. Those 360,000 are scattered over a country equal in area to Great Britain, Ireland, and France put together. O *

Some of the townships arc 600 miles from the coast. Roads of some kind have to he made to the more important of them. The means ef education, of protection for life and property, and of administering justice, have to be provided. Rivers must be bridged and public buildings have to be erected ; and all this expenditure has to be defrayed out of the revenue raised chiefly from a population which does not exceed that of a secondrate European city. There is, therefore, an enormous disproportion between the vast area over which the public money has to he spread and the extremely circumscribed sources from which it must be drawn ; and there is no hope of a discontinuance of this state of things in any of tho Australian colonies until they combine to promote a large and systematic influx of people from Europe.

New Zealand, in this respect, has a decided advantage over the Australian Colonies, that will make itself in time to come even more apparent than it is now. It is plain, from the concentration of population round the ports of import and export, that peculiar facilities for obtaining a living are found in them, otherwise Melbourne would not have 180,000 inhabitants, Sydney--90,000, with its suburban 50,000, and so on, This fact should suggest a few plain truths to some glibbecl tongued politicians, who talk plausible nonsense about keeping our gold at home, protecting native industry, and so on. But the lesson that lies on the surface is the most telling.. It points to the necessity for guiding the course of population, by marking out distinct lines of railway, instead of following the hap-hazard plan of selling patches of land, at a distance from any centre of civilization, and then having to complete the contract, expressed or implied, of connecting the two with an imperfect road, at an expence altogether disproportional to the advantage conferred on the purchaser or the remainder of the population. New Zealand has had the advantage of colonization from several centres, and this, together with its being an island, precludes the possibility of any township being (300 miles from a port of import and export. But this does not do away with the necessity for system in our colonisation. There are, amongst us, theorists who aro loud in praise of “ Free selection before survey,” and so on. They are no doubt abstractedly right in their dogma that unappropriated land should bs left free for a man to settle upon, if he choose. But this implies that such a man should seek no assistance from his neighbors ; otherwise new conditions at once arise, and they have a right to ask what he is prepared to give in return for spending their money in making his roads, and bridging the rivers that lie between him and civilisation. Free selection thus comes within the limits of the definition of “ liberty,” which really means <r lho power a man should

“ possess to do as he likes, so long as “ lie does nob interfere with the rights “of his neighbor.” In coarse of years, !\s population increases in New South Wales, the disadvantages of too diffused a population will disappear. The land that intervenes between the ports and the distant townships will be profitably occupied, and thus expenditure and taxation will be balanced. But countries are like trading establishments. If colonisation is conducted without system—like trading, firms without plan and discipline—the Governments will be in continual difficulties. When such accidents as gathering large populations on goldfields occur, the case is widely different. There is sufficient ground to bring them into as immediate [connection with the capital as is possible. But where the slow process of extending agricultural development is concerned, it is important, before* hand, to define the course of country to be opened up, as by this means only will an intending settler understand the advantages he may fairly calculate upon deriving from his intended purchase.