POPULATION RETURNS.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 834, 6 July 1871, Page 3

POPULATION RETURNS.

The Melbourne "Argus " makes some remarks upon the tendency of population in these colonies to centralise itself in large towns :—There is a most unsatisfactory feature in the census returns. Of the entire population of the Colony of Victoria, more than a fourth (193,694) is clustered in Melbourne and its suburbs. The pyramid is balanced on its apex, instead of •securely resting on its base. We are not producers in Melbourne. We merely transmute and barter. Gold wool, and corn—our main material resources—are not raised or grown in Collins-street. Is it not absurd that it should occupy ■■ one. man in every four to performjhe work of importation and distribution? It must be remembered, too, that of the remaining three-fourths # many are women, many are children, many are themselves •country shop-keepers, so that the actual number of producers upon whose labours the rest-of the population live is a preposterously small proportion of the whole. Imagine t'le absolute stoppage of the gold and wool yield, and we «an .then realise how grave a matter is the unnatural distribution of population between town and country. We want machinery for driving the unemployed or half employed into the wilderness — which, is not a barren wilderness. The seed must be sown broadcast before it can vigorously fructify. To empty a sack in a corner of the

field will accomplish nothing but unwholesome fermentatiou. We lack bold peasantry—their country's pride. The cartoon designs represent Victoria as gracefully formed and classically draped. In future, if they would be truthful, let them depict her with a fashionably hydroeephalous head, unnaturally swollen, and utterly disproportioned to her puny body and weak legs. We want more stout yeomen and fewer shopkeepers. We want the statesman who can effectively deal with the superabundant population of the metropolis, as old Throck did with the cricketers in the first muft'-match he captained when ho issued the Napoleonic decree, " Scatter 'round, boys."