FIRST ARRIVAL OF GOLD FROM AUSTRALIA. [From the "Globe."]

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 616, 10 March 1852, Page 4

FIRST ARRIVAL OF GOLD FROM AUSTRALIA. [From the "Globe."]

The dove from the stranded Australian ailf, the Thomas Aibuthnot, arrives, beaiing —not an olive branch —but a lump of gold 4 Jibs, -weight, consigned to Mr. Dunbar, the shipowner. " Fortunate man he has lived to see it i Fortunate if he lives to see nothing," &c.; but we spare our readeis the rest from Burkes speech N>n Amorican reconciliation. Suffice it to say, that in both hemispheres, our Age of Iron seems in a suigulai state of fusion with a renewed Age of Gold. Auriferous Cordileiasand Coil's revolvers, diggings,and dirks, mountains of ore, and mounted police, Judge Lynch in Eldoradosuch, in the American and Austial-Asiatic gold regions are the curious combinations of this half-finished century. The naive expression of the writer of a letter to a friend in London, *By the time this letter reaches you, I hope 1 shall have recovered myself from this state of excitement," speaks volumes as to the ferment of more ambitious minds, and the frenzy of loss settled characters. Wlipn we said the Australian ark was stianded, we fear we illustrated the immediate probable prospects of agricultural and pastoral industry in these advancing colonies only too exactly. Under such circumstances we are glad to see that some of the Sydney papers, (c. %., the Herald,} are seeking to moderate, rather than fuither to inflame, the prevailing excitement, and to direct attention to the suier, and even greater profits which may bo made by working the soil than by washing it. " The question," says the lie)aid, " which is now in eveiybody's mouth is, where is the flour to come from to meet the demand which will he required when the tide of emigration sets in fiom the neighbouring colonies !....... .The holder of wheat in Van Dieinen's Land can fine a ready and profitable market here for his surplus wheat, and at an advanced profit upon what he could obtnin for it there. Neither need he fenr.the oompptition of the South Australian market, ibr, notwithstanding the inoreascd emigration to Adelaide, and consequent increased consumption of flour, almost all the surplus wheat that could be spared has been shipped to the Cape, where the crop has failed, and where wheat is extensively in demand. Can New Zealand spare us any 1 We tear not —or, if any, an inappreciable quantity as compared with what will be required The supplies, therefore, fiom Tasmania, New Zealand, and South Australia, will bo limited whilst the gold field of New South Wales will prove a poweiful magnet in attracting emigrants in largo numbers." It will be one of the extraordinary top9y-turvities of this nll-out-of-their-reclconing-throwing-time, if those very Australian colonies, fiom receiving whose wheat the British agricultural mind shiunk abhorrent, when Mr. Hutt proposed it, as Loid Stanley opened our markets to Canada in 1843 —who should now come and carry off our surplus corn stocks, as well as oui surplus working hands, and the tide of imports of raw produce, or of the first manufacture fiom it (flour,) should become refloent by the operation of the universal magnet from tbe.old back again to the new country. The one thing needful in the eye of the monopolist mind, before meat, drink, or clothing, was gold. Well, gold is likely to come in sufficient quantities, and, while we do not in the least deny the stimulus which the quest of gold will afford to European and American colonization (as to the spade industry of the old man's sons in the fable), yet like theso, the most permanently benefited will be the least dazzled by the mere glitter of the bait, and the least apt to let drop any regular pursuit to grasp at it. Fools build, that wise men may inhabit; rash and reckless adventurers run to grab gold, with knives and pistols in belt; and the hotter luck theirs, if they do not got a taste of the quality of the like piecautionary appliances of the less precious metals. Tillers and giaziers wait till the gold comes to them, as come very speedily it will—without the diggers' drawbacks of liability to " wake with their thioats cut," or their joints racked with rheumatism. There is anothoi subject which, we cannot help thinlring, will assume new aspects under this new excitement. We mean that of transportation to such of our Australian colonies as it is still continued to. If the gold fields keep and incjoase their attractions, the "main chance" of those colonies, as it has hitherto been considered—pasturage —must sutler proportionably for sheer lack of shepherds. Now it has always been admitted that your London pickpocket madr* a capital if Paftor Fido" as an assigned convict. We may be quite sure of this, men will not let perish their great staple produce for the sake of a sentiment. And as we have always deemed the sentiment an utteily false and perverted one at home and mainly factitious in the Australian colonies (resulting in fact fiom operative apprehensions of seejng wages lowered), we cannot but regard with some satisfaction the prospect that convict labour will be at a premium, and tho modified restoration of the old assignment system a boon to the pastoral prosperity of these colonies. Tho old story of perpetual pollution to colonies fiom the presence of men who have once committed ciime might have more sense in it, if total change ot circumstances had not a tendency to transform characteia —and if evon convicts did not wish and strive that their children should have different chaiacteis from themselves. It is odd enough that a morning contompoiary commenced a recenc article with much abuse of Lord Grey, for being about to send " a ship load of mingled degradation and pollution combined," viz., two hundred temale convicts to Van Diemen's Land and closed it with the statement that " the great iacility of marriage operates as a powerful antidote to profligate celibacy among women; and many women of abandoned character who have been sent out by the Emigration Commissioners at the ex-

ppnso of the colony, have availed themselves of this opportunity of reformation." Degradation and poliut ion aie pretty sure to ensue fiom the paucity ot noiuun — and not less sine to be mitigated, and, in time, removed by the piesense even of women who hnvo pried. Not depfiad.ition, hut recovery fiom degradation — not pollution, but lemedy of pollution is the net re ult. This, appears from the aho\ c statement of the Times of the le.uly manure of women even of previously abandoned chnractcis in Sjdney (for the extinct refers to that city.) So we aie to believe the Sydney folks pollute themselves ; while Lord Grey pollutes Van Diemen's Land — haples" Van Diemen's Land, "two-thiids of whoso adults," say^ tlicj Tunes, "consist aheady of ti.»n«poited felons." FJow many things recal the Johnsonian ndmonition. "My dear Sir, clear your mind of cant !"