AUSTRALIA.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue II, 24 December 1858, Page 4

AUSTRALIA.

{From ike Times.) We have been recently told by a French journal, that among all our numerous failures by land and sea we have been especially unsuccessful in the colonisation of Australia. We bore this accusation with our accustomed meekness, consoling ourselves with the reflection, that whatever may have been our successes in the fifth quarter of the globe, they have cost us no blood and very little money—considerations which have reconciled the commercial mind of this country to the entire absence of all martial glory, of battles, sieges, pictures by Horace Vernet, field-marshal batons, and military decorations illustrating o.ir conquests on the shores of the Pacific Ocean—a sea hitherto, we are very happy to think, very properly so called. This, however, is, after all, but negative consolation, and we therefore request the attention of our critics to some of the positive results of the colonisation of Australia as depicted in the monthly detail of news just received. Of course we do not pretend to any rivalry with the far more brilliant operations which our neighbours have executed on the other side of the Mediterranean; we only wish our censors to take note of ths state of things rather implied than expressed in the intelligence we have received. In the first place, the revenues of the colony of Victoria are in a very satisfactory state, the increase on the year ending the Bth of June last being no loss than £500,000, out of a revenue amounting altogether to something less than i 53,500,000 —not a bad income, one would think, for a colony which as only just attained the J2l st year of its existence. Let it be observed that this fine settlement not only • does not now cost, but never has cost, the mother country anything, the very troops which it requires for its defence being paid for, like those of the East India Company, out of colonial funds. The next point to which we call attention is the establishment of a new bank ior the colonists, who are not unreasonably anxious to get this branch of business into their own hands, instead of trusting it to the numerous English Companies by which it has hitherto been almost entirely monopolised. The next melancholy indication of the declining state of these drooping settlements is the statement of gold exported from Victoria during the last six months, which amounts to 1,277j568 ounces, and, what is still more melancholy, shows an almost progressive increase month by month.' Then, again, there is the further fact. that capital and the combination and division of labor are beginning to be applied in earnest to the production of gold, and that lands believed to have been exhausted by the researches of single diggers are being worked at a profit by the quartz-crushing companies. Indeed, gold-mining is now carried on with success within nine miles of the city or Melbourne itself. But perhaps this colony, so wealthy, so prosperous, so self-reliant, is growing weary of her connection with perfidious Albion, and meditating a bold stroke for independence, such as that which separated from us our earlier settlements in America? The same letter which brings us news of this very considerable material progress informs us that politics are a blank, that there is absolutely nothing to talk or write about, the only topic which seems to engross the attention "of the public being the mission of the mayor of Melbourne —a gentleman who has made a large property in the colony, and rejoices, moreover, in the truly national patronymic of Smith —on a message round the globe for the purpose of presenting an address to her Majesty congratulating her on the marriage of the Princess Royal. This herald of approaching revolution carries with him £4200 as a further subscription from the colony of Victoria to the Indian Relief Fund, and £l 10 for the fund for the relief of soldiers' daughters. Such are our tidings from Victoria, and we think we shall be guilty of no overstrained inference if we assert that,, in whatever we may have failed, we have at any rate succeeded in raising up a community wealthy, prosperous, enterprising, and self-supporting, contented with its own institutions, and cordially and even affectionately attached to the mother country from whom she received them. Xet us now turn to New South Wales— a colony which was once our' Cayenne or j Lambessa, only with this important difference, that our convicts were sent, there to live instead, of to die. New South Wales is not in so tranquil a political state as Victoria, for it is engaged at this moment in-giving itself, under the name of a Reform Bill, what is virtually, in many respects, a new constitution. A warm struggle is going on; the Conservative minority fight their ground inch by inch, but the measure makes progress, nevertheless, and will, for good or for evil, shortly become law. Another question has arisen, which, considering our long exclusion from all commerce with the Celestial Empire, has about it.something of an air of comic retribution. The Chinese in New South Wales number at the present time no less than 25,000 souls. Like the Mormons, and for somewhat analogous reasons, they have been driven from the other colonies of Australia, and have found a refuge at last in New South Wales. It requires no detailed exposition to show that the immigration of 25,000 Chinese—men without women—carries with it most serious objections to an English community, and these objections are much aggravated and enhanced by the jealousy of the working classes, who -view in their Celestial j immigrants, formidable opponents, whose competition must tend, in a considerable degree to lower the rate of wages, which just at this moment has fallen below the ordinary average., The result has been, not an absolute prohibition, but certainly a very heavy duty on this kind of imported labour, for every Chinese 19 for the future to be charged on landing

an entrance fee of £10, nominally for the purpose of defraying the expenses they occasion to the Government, but really with the view of keeping them, if possible, out of the country altogether. Were the Emperor of China in a condition to make demands on us as well as to agree to ours, he might probably be considered not unreasonable in demanding for his subjects as free a passage into our dominions as he undertakes to accord to us. The colony is about to undertake three railway extensions —to the south, to the west, and to the north. It has also had its first considerable railway accident—a clear proof of advancing civilisation. This colony also has raised £5000 as its contribution to the Indian Relief Fund. Such is a month's intelligence from Australia, checkered, like all human affairs, with adversity and prosperity, good and evil, hope and disappointment, but presenting on the whole no- unpleasing, nor unsatisfactory picture of youthful communities working out their own destinies by their own energies, of hopeful and energetic progress, checkered only by those drawbacks and reverses which will wait upon the most prosperous men and undertakings. In the meanwhile the island of many names, the French colony of Reunion, finding itself grievously in want of labour, has been recruiting among the natives of the South Sea Islands, not without grievous suspicion of kidnapping. The accusation is made by an English sailor, but is emphatically denied by the captain, who challenges proof, which in this case can hardly be forthcoming. Probably, however, ..enough has been done to prevent the "repetition of the offence, and unless these natives of the Southern Ocean are very different from any of those with whom Europeans have hitherto come in contact they will carry with them their own surest protection in their own utter uselessness and inefficiency as labourers, in the filthiness of their habits, and the insubordination of their conduct. We regard the strong feeling which this case has excited in Australia as symptomatic of a healthy moral tone, and are glad to see that a great pastoral community, carrying on that pursuit in which slave labour is more particularly useful, evinces no inclination to tamper with the question, but holds as firmly aloof from it as if the Australian farmers were able to command any number of Dorsetshire or Oxfordshire labourers at Bs. a week. Putting all things together, we see no reason to be ashamed of the monthly bulletins from our Australian colonies.