THE TIMES SUMMARIES AND THE COLONIES.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 538, 9 March 1876, Page 3

THE TIMES SUMMARIES AND THE COLONIES.

The London correspondent of the Argus writes : An interesting publication was issued from The Times office at the commence" ment of the month, being the reprint of the annual summaries that have appeared on the last day of the year for the quarter of a century just ended. There are in the volume about 600 pages, and it is curious to note how small a space is occupied by colonial references, not twenty pages being devoted to them, though it is fair to remark that of late years the allusions are far more frequent than in the first portion of the twenty-five years. In the year 1851 the colonies are passed without notice. In 1852, however, we are told that “ Emigration has set in to our Australian colonies, in addition to the transatlantic current, with unprecedented force. Vessels cannot be found to be too large nr too swift, and a new class of emigrant ships has come into existence, to be replaced in its turn by one much larger. Not to insist for ever or exclusively on the benefits of free trade, the immediate course of this extraordinary movement by land and sea is the daily increasing discovery of the Australian gold fields. The vastest treasure ever yet accumulated by man has been this year in the vaults of the Bank of England, but it is no more than the annual crop of gold reaped by a few thousand Englishmen from the valleys and mountain sides of a remote colony.” From 1852 to 1859 was a long era, pregnant with great results to the Australasian colonies, but it was not until the latter year that the Times deemed reference necessary in its annual summary to your existence. B /en then half a dozen lines were sufficualf, We read—“ The gold discoveries, in audition to their direct action on the currency, have created new markets for English products at the antipodes. Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand are flourishing and loyal communities, &c.” Between 1860 and 1875 there were only four years, during which no allusion was made to the condition of the colonies. la the summary for the year just ended half a column is devoted to the colonial empire, though scarcely connected with the colonies, except as the favorite route to Australia. It is of interest to compare the reference? to the Suez Canal in the Times in the summary for the year 1859. Commenting on the fact that during a portion of the year th ;

relations between France and England had been unsatisfactory, it says :—“ At this moment the French Government is pushing on with extraordinary zeal the suspicious project of an impracticable Suez canal.” la the preface to the volume before me, speaking of the events of a quarter of a century, we read:—“lt has been the commencement, the completion, and now the practical acquisition by pur own country of perhaps the grandest mutual work ever achieved by man—the canal which divides continents and unites the Northern and Southern Oceans,”