SAN FRANCISCO.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 266, 8 May 1860, Page 3

SAN FRANCISCO.

(From the Melbourne Age) We received last week advices from San Francisco to the 7th of February; and from these we learn that it is not merely in agricultural and mining enterprise and prosperity that the spirit of progress is conspicuously evinced, but that it is exhibited also in the extraordinary success with which call very highest branches of manufacture are pursued We are thus told that there are portions of San Francisco which call to mind Manchester and Birmingham, by the forest of factory chimney-stacks and lofty smoke shafts presented to view, and by the ceaseless hum of machinery which ever strikes upon the ear. The ship-yards ring with the noise of boilermakers, engine-makers, and ship-wrights plying their various crafts; and there is nothing in the nature of steam-machinery, whether to be used afloat or on shore, which the Californiani require, that is not supplied by the factories of San Francisco. Amongst the latest of the chef-d'oeuvre of the ship-wright's art we find mention made of the Saginaw war steamer, which has just been built and fitted np with her machinery at the Mare Island Navy Yard^—one of the Government establishments in California—and it is proudly set forth that she is wholly Californian in every respect, hull, machinery, spars, and rigging, and in the science and skill, too, which devised, presided over and worked out her entire construction. The Saginaw is one of the four war steamers ordered to be built by tha Buchanan Adminiatration; and it does undoubtedly strongly attwt the ad. ranee in manufacturing industry mafc by tbii young state of California, when the O.S. Government can safely entrait, not only the building, bit alto the fitting with machinery, of * war-sUamw to jut wrehajfrri wwwow*

Every other branch of industry or enterprise, exhibits similar proofs of intense vitality. For instance, there are no less than eleven daily newspapers in San Francisco city alone. Arid from this many-voiced channel of intelligence, we learn how varied and how nnmerous are the paths which industry is continually marking out for itself, to turn to account the inimitable capabilities presented by the mineral and agricultural resources of the country —all enteprise being facilitated, supported and urged forward by the abundance and cheapness of not merely the necessaries but [even the luxuries of life, which their free land system and unrestricted cultivation of the soil put at the disposal of the people. Last autumn, the overland immigration amounted to between 40,000 and 60,000 souls, who created a market for the surplus breadstuff* furnished by the heavy crops of the season; and these newly-arrived immigrants are now in their turn engaged in preparing a harvest for the supply of the thousands who will have followed them in their westward course to the attractive land, where not merely the golden chances of the mines, but likewise the far more powerful magnet of a certain and prosperous home, awaited the new-comers. We find it stated in one paper that the number of vme-plantß in full bearing in the State is not less than four-millions, orange trees, 25,003; lime trees, 6000; lemon trees, 4000; whilst figs (three different tpecies), almonds, olives, peaches, pomegranates, quinces, nectarines, pears, apples, strawberries, tobacco, hemp, and flax, are grown in abundance throughout the country, and sorghum and beet-root are cultivated so successful as to furnish profitable employment to sugar-mills attached to the plantations. Let us contrast this vigorous and* matured prosperity—this practical development and actual fruition of the bountiful resources of a good soil and a'genial climate, by a manly and intelligent race of adventurous pioneers in the wilderness, with the feeble, puerile, ignorant mismanagement and neglect of similar natural advantages in this country by the unprogressive, impoverished, taxbled, unsettled, nomadic, over-governed, red-tape-fettered Australian y and then let us put the question if we can without blushing, where in comparison are the signs of this civilization here, of which we are so front to vaunt ourselves ?

Has not the freer system of laum-fairt which obtains amongst the Americans, then, as contradistinguished from the system of too much government which prevails in Australia, something likewise to do with the difference of result shown thui in the settlement of Victoria and California, by men of the same race, language, and religion '{ We believe it has largely to do with it; and further, too, it appears certain that until the AngloAustralia learns how to burst the fetters of monopoly, and freely to use the advantages, social and political, of his new position as a colonist, barren results in agriculture, commerce, laws, and government—political crises and commercial failures—will alone be derived from his possession of the finest opportunities and the noblest resources ever placed at the disposal of mankind.