Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/231

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NATIVE AUSTRALIANS
199

he boasts, and to the growth of which he and his fellows have yet contributed so little! Step by step the wild lands have been reclaimed; stone by stone the noble cities built; mile by mile the far-reaching lines of rail and wire have been stretched; foot by foot the buried treasures sought and found; one by one the schools of art and learning erected and endowed. By whom? Not by the 'Young Australian,' surely! Did that freedom, which he boasts as his, spring self-begotten from the earth? Was that noble educational system which he praises born of the soil? Have the grand gifts which the fast-vanishing generation of 'foreigners' will bequeath to their sons dropped from the clear Australian skies? The gifts of art and science, of learning and culture, of commerce and manufactures, of ripening harvests and glittering ores; the shady groves of 'Academe'; the gathered treasures of literature and of the sister arts; the temples of religion and of justice; the palaces of commerce, and the huge piles that quiver to the throbbing pulses of the tireless giant whose hot breath and iron sinews obey the master's slightest touch; the parks and gardens; and the thousand homes of comfort and of health;—are all these nothing in the eyes of those of our