THE WANT OF THE COLONIES.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 77, 1 April 1871, Page 4

THE WANT OF THE COLONIES.

(Melbourne Daily Telegraph). The great want of the Australian colonies, what is it ? No eagle eye is needed to make the discovery. The something which keeps the colonies stagnant, which no political institution, nor land law, nor taiiif, can give us, is simply a lack of the true colonising spirit. Nine people out of ten here verily believe that a colony is an English suburb, and feel a vague sense of personal injury when their ideal is disturbed. The word "colonisation" has the same meaning in their mouths as it has in that of a parrot. Instead of our attention being almost wholly directed to the reclamation of the wilderness, trades and commerce being the incidents of our life, we know, rutTst of us, that settlement on the lands is^ the last idea which enters our head ; shopkeeping, trades, and commerce are the first. We regard, the colonies as fit-Ids for employment, while ..colonies are. as any child's primer

would tell us, nothing else l>ut places for •he investment of capital, and principaUy iliat capital which assumes the shape oF labor. "Planting a country," said Bacon, in his celebrated es-.iy, which remain-* true to this hour, and will be true to all ages, "•' is like the planting of woods, for you must make account to lose twenty years' profit, and look for your recompense in the end." It was in this spirit (hat, the Pilgrim Fathers, the world's model colonists, went out. They did not expect to find situations awaiting them. The Red Indians, l,hey were aware were not employers of labor. They did not anticipate even wo- king at their own particular artificial trades and callings. They went to take service in the great establishment of Nature, to cut down her trees, plough her fields, reap her corn^ spin her flax, knowing what her wages would he, and content to receive tli^m. In the same way with their successors. Men left the Old World, and puyoehincl them any expectation of makingj^ortune? by the Old World ways of haggling over counters, or fleecing their fellow-beings', or even of working in iactories and mills. Their steadiiy oarried out object was to acquire cheap land, in the expectation that in after years, when they had reclaimed their wilderness, population would gather about them, their produce would become readily marketable, their homesteads would increase forty-fold in value, and they wo ull leave their families in the enjoyment of peace and plenty. Nine people out of ten iv Australia would shrink from this stern and truthful prospect, and hence, instead of population in this He» country of fertile acres and sunny Jjlfies exulting "like strong men aboue^o run a race,' we have discontent, grumbling, and visionary plans of prosperity to be secured by Acts of Parliament. Our besetting weakness is best exemplified in our young mm':" In America the " Western fever " \pfi\\\ in full force. Not a new Englami^foumal but contains 1 lie record of some hive having swarmed, some band of active high spMted young men having taken to themselves wives and wasr(T'ms. and started off to found a settlement, shaking off for ever the dust of cities from their feet and prepared to live the same life and acquire a competency in the fame slow, and sure way as their ancestors. "No alcohol and no land speculators "' were, it may be mentioned incidently, the principle on whi- h some scores of new settlements were formed last year, and which are expected to be adopted in hundreds of instances in 1871. -And it is in their rurnl homes, founded by intell'ger.t men, tha r the great he:irt of tho country bea<«. The giant" of ihe land — ils Clays, Wehstprs. si ml Lincolns — are bred there. But the entire history of Victoria, we beUeve,is innocent of tin; record of any such project. The brains of our young men are'gniltless of having conceived the scheme ; their hands are free from the % poil of executing ir, and are likely to remain unspotted. A Government "billet" is the height of their ambition, and between a situation of some kind anl s'arvat'ou they know no rcsovt. Their real capital — their youth and t^eir capacity for labor — they are devoting to the aggrandisement of others, or wastiig away in idleness, losing their manhood in the enervating civilisation of cities. Not that they are solely to blame. We have all sinned. Men with capital have been, and are, gnilty of the same fault in their degree guilty of what Bacon describes with indignation as having been the ruin of plantations,'^", c. , colonies in his day, " the base and hasty drawing away of profits." With artisans it is the same. If a dozen steel-makers came out they would expect employment at their own trades, and never imagine that a new world means new modes of life — the working, in the main, of each man for himself at the task Nature has provided. What the colony above all others lacks is, indeed, a backbone in the shape of thousands of industrious, frugal, hardworking settlers, living chiefly on their own produce, and working on in cheerfulness and temperance in the hope of establishing homes, and enjoying ease and plenty in their old age with their families. It would be utterly hopeless to expert the population' attracted here by the goldfields to conform to this situation. Their coming here was not a legitimate swarming from the parent hive. A dip in the lucky bag was the view they took of their migration, and not a life of toil, rewarded ouly by competency, and only that at* the end. Still for the sake of the country, and to spare individual misery, it should be understood, that only the real .colonist, the actual developer of a new is needed here for the future. The goldfields formerly made our case exceptional; they appear now lo be fully occupied; and therefore the immitrrnnt of the future, no matter what his skill in his own trade or ••* calling may bp, will be useless here unless he is prepared to face work, and what is more important, unless he has the capacity for obtaining work— not from the man but from Nature,