NEW GUINEA.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 480, 31 December 1875, Page 3

NEW GUINEA.

(Fio n the Pall Mall Chzettc.) The Australian colonists may fairly be considered the spoilt children of the British Empire. Like other spoilt children, they are not content unless they have everything their own way; and so far, it must be allowed, they have got nearly all they have cried for. It is doubtful whether they themselves appreciate their wonderful good luck. The various colonies—Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South and West Australia, and even Queensland—enjoy for the most part a sunny and agreeable climate, to which it is possible that in the long run our race may accommodate itself. Very early in their career—too early, as many think—the whole continent was handed over to the sole possession and control of a few hundred thousand people who fringed the coast line, and they have since held exclusive and somewhat jealous sovereignty over it. The population is almost entirely drawn from the British islands, and the slight admixture of the foreign element is much more completely absorbed than are the French colonists in Canada or the German immigrants in the United States. Unlike their brethren in New Zealand or at the Gape, they have had neither Maoris nor Kaffirs to contend against at a heavy expense in men and money ; and it must be confessed that they have made short work, at a cheap rate, with the miserable, stunted aborigines who ventured now and then to interfere with the peaceable settlement of the country. The great gold discoveries, together with the enormous extension of pastoral farming, resulting from the introduction of the merino sheep, have given them wealth far beyond what the early settlers dreamed of. In the course of the next twenty years it is pro bable that the great coal and other mineral deposits of New South Wales will still further increase the prosperity of the country. Of late no San Juan arbitration, no wholesale sacrifice of their valuable fisheries, no persistent snubs by permanent officials, have tried their loyalty as the loyalty of the Canadians has been tried On the contrary, they have been treated with the greatest consideration ; even their prejudices have received more than due attention, and they themselves believe, with some reason, that their clamor had a share in hastening the annexation of Fiji. The result of all this good fortune and prosperity is that they not unnaturally over estimate their own importance, and at the present time have set to work on their platforms and in their newspapers to dictate the course of Imperial policy in a manner that would be irritating if it were not ridiculous. As we pointed out at the time, it was one of the incidental misfortunes of the annexation of the Fiji Islands that as soon as that step was taken every island in the ocean not already in possession of a European Power would be pressed upon us. As Australia was the country immediately interested in the one case, it was not difficult also to foresee that the acquirement of New Guinea would be one of the first proposals of this sort. Accordingly now from every part of Australia we aro assured that it behoves England for herown credit and interest, to say nothing of the benefit to Australia, to annex New Guinea at once. That the interior of the island is wholly unknown; that no Englishmen arc settled even on the coast; that the natives are split up into numberless tribes, many of whom are very hostile to the white man, makes no difference. The glory of the enterprise to the mother country will be the greater, and the danger and expense Australia does not in the least propose to share. Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland have all said their say pretty strongly on this question, and it must be admitted that their unanimity is wonderful. It is a thousand pities that they cannot arrange their tariffs with the same harmony. South Australia, the last in the field, not to be outdone on this exceptional occasion of intercolonial agreement, has come forward with an official petition, in which she prays, not merely that the English flag should be hoisted on the great island of Papua, but that the New Hebrides, the Solomon Isles, and any other groups here and there in the Pacific, that may happen to be unoccupied, save by savages, should be immediately annexed. It is worth while here to call to mind that the chief reason put forward in Australia for laying hands upon New Guinea is that if any foreign Power were to seize it, the Australian colonies would be placed at a terrible disadvantage. Now, between South Australia and Torres Straits there lies the Sahara of Australia, a vast and almost unexplored desert, hundreds of miles in breadth. Therefore, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that it would be almost as reasonable for the French to take possession of Madagascar in order to ward off a possible German attack upon Algeria as for England to take New Guinea in order to protect Adelaide from a possible raid by a European Power which might annex New Guinea,