Though lacking the old-world culture, and with far less comprehensive minds than their great predecessors, it cannot be denied by any impartial critic who has lived for a number of years in Australia, that many of these later and purely colonially-trained leaders have on occasion showed marked capacity for the guidance of public affairs in new communities; for which, I must confess that their serene ignorance of much of the lore and tradition of the "antique world" has often been, at least in the eyes of their less gifted fellow- colonists, rather a recommendation than a barrier. The former type of Colonial, or rather Anglo-colonial, statesmen, despite the occasional and not unwelcome intrusion on the public stage of a democratic "Fellow of Oriel," like Mr. Charles Henry Pearson, the present Minister of Education in Victoria, must be regarded as practically extinct. Whether the local universities will supply its place, the future alone can reveal. In the meantime, it has come to pass that Wentworth and Lowe have been succeeded, in the northern part of what was then the undivided colony of New South Wales, by leaders like Sir Samuel Griffith and Sir Thomas M'Ilwraith.
