Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/124

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AUSTRALIA AND THE EMPIRE

the Botanical Gardens, and at the Government Offices, men of the highest scientific attainments, drawn from all parts of the world, and tempted to Australia by large salaries voted by the democracy. The statesmen of all the colonies are well worthy of the posts they hold. Mr. Macalister in Queensland, and Mr. (Sir James) Martin at Sydney, are excellent debaters. Mr. (Sir Henry) Parkes, whose biography will be the typical history of a successful colonist. … The business powers of the present Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales are remarkable; and Mr. Higinbotham, the present Attorney-General of Victoria, possesses a fund of experience and a power of foresight which it would be hard to equal at home."

The entire chapter, as I have indicated, is specially deserving the attention of that class of itinerant Englishmen who, by reason of their own social status, are too apt to be duped by the superfine and dissatisfied type of colonist, whom even Sir Charles Dilke had to encounter in the person of the "Government clerk," who assured him that "the three last Ministers at the head of his department had been 'so low in the social scale that my wife could not visit theirs.'" Unlike Mr. Finch-Hatton,