AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 962, 16 April 1872, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Mr Anthony Trollope's sketch of Queensland society, as given in his letters to the " Daily Telegraph," are not regarded with unmixed satisfaction in that colony. The " Brisbane Courier " writes as follows : —" We fear that should another popular writer visit liockhampton he will not meet with so hearty a welcome as that given to the special commissioner of the " Daily Telegraph." He will not be publicly feted, or privately bored, as people will not again run the risk of entertaining unveraoious writers unawares. It must be confessed that Mr Trollope was, in racing phraseology, a " dead take in." Among the good advice which he gave under the geuial aspiration of champagne, was a rebuke to the local press. " Hit hard as you please," he said, " but write what at the time you feel to be the truth." Comparing the popular novelist's afternoon speech with his letter to the " Daily Telegraph," we are constrained in all friendliness to say ' Physician, heal thyself.' To such an extent has this feeling gone, that we observe the honorary secretary to the East Moreton farmers' Association has been empowered to ' draw up the draft of a reply to the misrepresentations contained in Antipodean's ' letter,' which Mr. Trollope will find perfectly withering.' We pay our ministers (writes the " Melbourne Telegraph") with a tolerable liberality, and that very payment adds to the difficulties of their position; for men in Parliament are tempted to intrigue for power, not only because it is pleasurable, but because it is profitable. Hence Ministers are continually on trial for their lives, or at least their existence. And our constitution is so framed as to include this startling anomaly—that the jury who tries a ministry is composed of the men who, if it is condemned, will enter upon its possession. A steward who should manage just as long as his competitors thought he handled the estate discreetly, would not feel very sure of his position, and would be driven to all sorts of tricks and stratagems to " divide and rule;" and it is precisely this position, in which our Ministers are placed, and it is precisely these tricks and stratagems they are often driven to in order to keep a majority together. While giving botanical evidence in some thistle prosecutions at the Creswick (Victoria) Police Court the other day, Dr Daniel Bunce, curator of the Geelong Botanical Gardens, stated that an infallible way to destroy thistles was, just before the bud began to form to cut the roots through with a spade about two inches below the surface; also, that the practice of cutting them above the surface was an utter waste of both money and labour, as the thistles thus treated invariably sprang up again with a greater number of heads than before. Next to London, Melbourne is one of the greatest marts for wool in the whole world. During the year which ended on the Ist October, 1871, 222,574 bales, valued in round numbers at four millions aud a quarter sterling, were shipped to England from Port Phillip, or several thousand bales more than were exported from all the other Australian ports put together. Buyers from Great Britain, Prance, Belgium, Germany, the United States, and Canada eagerly compete with the local merchants, and if the trade goes on increasing in future years as it has during the past the bulk of the Australian wool will eventually be sold in Melbourne, and the famous London sales be shorn of much of their present importance. The total quantity of gold received at the Sydney Mint for coinage last year was 778,627 ounces of gold, and the number of sovereigns issued

2,814,000. There is every reason to believe that the yield during the cur. rent year will be greatly in excess of thj yield of all previous years.