The Three Colonies of Australia/Part 2/Chapter 32
CHAPTER XXVII.
CONCLUSION.
IN the preceding pages we have followed step by step the series of social, commercial, and political events which have established three free and prosperous colonies on the island-continent of Australia; the progress of the pastoral interest from the eight merinos imported by M'Arthur to the fourteen millions of fine-woolled sheep which now graze over Australian pastures; the progress of emigration, from the few score officials, soldiers, turnkeys, and rum-traders, who, for a quarter of a century, formed the only free additions to the native-born population, to the present time, when armies of emigrants, counted in tens of thousands, arrive from all countries of Europe and America; the progress of the value of land from the period when a bribe of rations and the aid of government-fed slave labour was needed to induce a colonist to accept a farm, to the present year, when land is sold by the foot at the rate of thousands of pounds per acre; the progress of trade from the mere barter of the year 1800, with imports dependent on the expenditure of the home government, to the year 1853, when millions of Australian exports in gold and wool create a new and profitable export for almost every branch of British manufactures, and afford employment for an amount of tonnage which British shipowners find themselves unable to supply; the progress of political institutions, from the irresponsible despotism of the first governor and gaoler, to the concession of the amplest powers of self-government and taxation, with full control of land and land funds, customs and casual revenues, to the three Legislative Assemblies of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, by the Conservative Duke of Newcastle.
These rapid strides of the English-speaking Australian colonists, in which the acquisition of political rights has kept pace with the enlargement of their material resources, we have endeavoured to trace with a firm and impartial pen. We conclude our task at a moment when the brightest prospects seem opening to the three colonies; when, released from the baneful control of transmarine bureaucracy, permitted to exercise with the most perfect freedom those rights of self-government which are so essential to the full development of the powers of an English race; relieved from the contamination of old world felonry; with all the aid that can be derived from the capital, the credit, the colonisation, and "cheap defence" of the parent state, Australia seems starting on the race of empire with greater advantages than have ever fallen to the offshoot of a great nation in ancient or modern times. Free institutions, unrestricted commerce, ample revenues, without debt, and without the taxes which a defensive force, naval or military, would require—nothing can retard the progress of our Australian fellow-countrymen, if they prepare in good time to counteract the money-worshipping, utilitarian spirit, and low tone of commercial morality which are the bane of new communities.
An antidote is to be found in the teaching of zealous Christian ministers, and in the study of those treasures of the literature, art, and science of the old world, which no modern material El Dorado can excel.
The regulation of the future colonisation of the Australians will rest with the colonists themselves. If they are wise, they will give no encouragement to that system of pauper emigration which the Government Commissioners have long patronised. No population can be more difficult to govern than a mob of uneducated peasantry, suddenly transferred from indigence to the wages of a gold country. It is the interest alike of the colonies and of this country, that the influence of rude men who crowd to the gold diggings should be counterbalanced by a stream of industrious, educated, intelligent families, the yeomen and frugal mechanics, with large families, who swell the ranks of "Family Colonisation," men who would be prepared to carry on colonisation by cultivation, and reproduce on the fertile lands of Australia the farms and villages of England. We commend to the attention of the Colonial Legislatures, the fathers of this many-childrened class, who are led to emigration, not by discontent, not by vain Utopian longings, but by
"The pride to rear an independent shed,
And give the lips they love unborrow'd bread,
To skirt their home with harvests widely sown,
And call the blooming landscape all their own,
Their children's heritage in prospect long."