THE PROGRESS OF THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4999, 2 April 1877, Page 3

THE PROGRESS OF THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.

(From the Home Hews.) Sir Charles Du Cane, K.C.M.G., late Governor-General of Tasmania, recently lecturing at Colchester on the past and present of that colony, gave a risumi of the history of that island, and an account of his six years' residence there as the Queen’s representative. Speaking of the progress which had been made, he said that what the next step in the future would be no one could venture with certainty to predict. But there was one step in the future not only of Tasmania, but of all the Australian colonies, which he earnestly hoped he might live to see. He heartily wished that the hour might be at hand when the Australian colonies would agree to the adoption of one uniform tariff and to establish complete free trade, if not with all the world, at lea t as between colony and colony. So far as Tasmania individually was concerned, the day when intercolonial free trade was adopted would be one to • be welcomed with feasting and rejoicing throughout the colony. To his mind the one great cause of depression has been the simple fact that the entiance to her nearest and most legitimate markets has been for years absolutely closed to her. Under the mistaken idea of protecting and artificially bolstering up native industry, Victoria has raised a prohibitory barrier against her fruit, jams, timber, and, in fact, against every article in the growth or manufacture of which Tasmania has the undoubted superiority over her neighbors. And as one bad example is sure to find imitators, a general system of retaliation goes on of each colony against its neighbor, each closing its markets to that which its neighbor most wants to sell. But it must not be thought it was in the interest of Tasmaria alone that he advocated free trade, and that which was its natural sequel, the federation of all the Australian colonies into a, single dominion. On the contrary, that which would benefit one would benefit all, and the larger and more populous the individual colony, the greater would be its individual benefit. There were, moreover, great questions looming in no distant future on which some common prin-' ciple of united action on the part of these colonies would be a positive necessity. There was the question of some united system of defence, the question of general immigration, of the exploration and settlement of neighboring territory, of mail services, and of ocean telegraphs ; above all, in the immediate future, there was the question of the means of internal communications. At the present time nearly every Australian colony of the group bad adopted a different railway gunge, and the main object of each colony’s railway system had been to draw traffic to its own capital, and to cut it off from that of its neighbor, no matter how much more convenient to a large portion of his own territory the market of that neighbor may be. It was thus that Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide were as yet unconnected by railways, and the primipal passenger traffic between them was still by sea. As regards the future of the relations between the colonies and Great Britain, he saw that his friend Sir Hercules Robinson, the Governor of New South Wales, in a speech estimated at the close of the present century the population of the Australian continent would bo over five millions, and that in the year 1950 it would be 31 \ millions, which was just the population of the United Kingdom at the last census. The question naturally arose, was it possible that so great an empire as this would consent to be bound by ever so slight and slender a tie to the mother country, and that it would not one day make a demand for independence that they would be unable to resist '1 His answer to that question would bo that if such a demand should be seriously and de-

liberately made, England would never dream of resisting it,nor would thepolicy of George Grenville, Charles Townsend, and Lord North ever be repeat-d by English statesmen of the present age. His answer would further be that its ever being made depended very maoh upon their own line of action towards their colonies. If they chose to be constantly informing their colonies that they looked upon the day of separation as being sooner or later inevitable, that their individual independence • and freedom were incompatible with the coexistence of a parental tie, and that the object of their policy must he to train them to independence, and then, with parental blessing, to turn them 'oose upon the world to follow the bent of their own inclinations, then they must not be surprised if the colonies take them at their word and cut themselves adrift. But if on the other hand they try to keep alive the idea that it w s possible for children not merely to have their full measure of independence, but to grow stronger, richer, and more intelligent with the parental tie unbroken than they would if it were severed— it is not necessary to cease to be British citizens in order to fulfil the duties of free and civilised and self-governing men, then he thought it was impossible to say how long the present union might not last unbroken.