THE POPULATION OF THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 106, 2 October 1874, Page 3

THE POPULATION OF THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.

“Atticus,”in The Leader, gives the folloAving comparative statement of the present position of the Australian colonies : —Their total population is 2,13(1,129; the revenue £11,174,887; and the commerce amounts to £84,908,585 per annum. Not so bad for a community the oldest settlement in Avhich is not more than eighty years old, and the majority not quite forty. Victoria is in population, revenue and trade, the premier colony, but in her live stock she is beaten by New South Wales, in area of land under cultivation by South Australia, and in extent by all her sisters. The Aveak point in connection Avith the future of this colony is her restricted territory, and unless something is done to giA’e her a portion of Riverina and South Australia, Victoria Avill be a sort of Belgium or Holland, Avhich is shut in betAveen France and Germany, and only exists on sufferance. Our statesmen should leave no stone unturned to increase our size. I should suggest the line of the Murrumbidgee, from its source in the SnoAvy Mountains to the point at Avhich it joins the Murray, and thence along the Murray to the ocean. If Ncav South Wales and South Australia object, the Imperial Parliament might take a more liberal vlcav of our necessities. Nothing was more unjust than to tail the Northern territory, which Avas discovered at the cost of Victoria, and by the blood of Victorians, on to the already oversized province of South Australia. ”