gentlemen had, after a little, to bear the strain of new and unprecedented responsibilities, and were long held accountable for much which they could not control as well as some things which they undoubtedly mismanaged. Mr. Chapman, in a pamphlet bearing his name,* ventured to declare that the Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria found himself surrounded by "the very weakest Executive in all the colonies." Mr. Lowe, somewhat later, and when the censure was certainly less applicable, assured the House of Commons that the Victorian Executive "having been trained in the school of dependence upon New South Wales, when everything of importance was referred to Sydney, were totally unequal to the duties which unforeseen circumstances threw upon them." But in the opinion of the colonists, the officers selected from their own ranks made a favourable contrast in aptitude and ability with the effete veterans of the old system; and it is certain that Mr. Stawell, who, as Attorney-General, long continued to direct the public affairs of the colony, was a man in many respects singularly well qualified for his office. Of a vigorous intellect, indefatigable industry, and clear integrity, he only wanted more sympathy with the mass of the community, and less of that love of victory at all costs, which is the weakness of strong men, to be an eminent ruler. At this period, however, he can scarcely be regarded as a free agent; he was the adviser of the Governor only as far as his advice was sought, and it was still supposed to be the first duty of a colonial functionary to satisfy the Colonial Office; to satisfy the colonists came only second, after an immense interval.

The new colony consisted of a territory the size of England and Wales, lying in the most southern, which in this hemisphere means the most cool and temperate, region of Australia. It is embraced on the south by the Pacific Ocean, which now carries the commerce of Europe and Australasia into five seaports-two of them land-locked, and among the safest in the world-and on the north by the Murray, a great river navigable for nearly a thousand miles. It lies in the same latitude as the warmer countries of Southern Europe, possesses a climate with all the charms and many of the inconveniences which distinguish the climate of Italy and Greece, and produces abundantly whatever fruits or cereals are to be found between the Mediterranean and the Hebrides. Since Columbus gazed with rapture on the teeming valleys of Cuba, no man had seen a new country more richly endowed with the gifts of nature.

A great change had taken place in the character and extent of the population, their pursuits, and their possessions during the fifteen years which had elapsed since the landing of Batman. The four white men who constituted that expedition were now represented by a population of nearly eighty thousand. It had grown with a rapid, steady increase. In 1841, as we have seen, the population had reached twelve thousand. In the five years between 1841 and 1846 it nearly trebled; in the four years between 1846 and 1851 this great increase

Responsible Government for the Australian Colonies. By H. S. Chapman. † Memorandum on Australian Constitutions.

again more than doubled. Of these eighty thousand about half resided in Melbourne and the surrounding district. Official statistics* estimated the members of the learned professions at that period at three hundred and fifty-five, and "other educated persons" at a thousand. Among the mercantile and enterprising class there had been some sudden reverses, owing mainly to over-speculation in land, but there was a sound trade steadily extending, and some conspicuous instances of great prosperity. Building land, which had been purchased at about £40 an allotment of half an acre at the early land sales, sold in a few favourite positions for £40 a foot. The houses in Melbourne had increased to upwards of four thousand, of which three thousand were of stone or brick, the remainder" of all shapes, sizes, materials, and colours." But no mere statistics, and no European experience, will realise to a stranger the actual aspect of a new town in a new country. The four thousand houses, which look so trim and regular in a tabular return, were sown in patches over a wide-straggling township, where groves of wattles and clumps of gum trees still reared their sombre foliage. Next to the ambitious stone house of the successful merchant there squatted, perhaps, a wooden shanty, roofed with zinc or tin, or it might be a tent, or a hut constructed out of packing cases, or there was a vacant space strewn with broken bottles, and the tin boxes which carry unwholesome dainties from Europe. Right in the middle of the highway stood, perhaps, the stump of a gigantic gum-tree, lately felled or burned; at ten perches distant you saw some public establishment at which you needed to transact business, but between you and it ran a natural watercourse cut by the semi-tropical rain in the porous soil-a rapid current if it were full, and if it were empty such a chasm as one may fancy yawned for Curtius in the Roman Forum. Close to the busiest marts of industry was often a quagmire, upon which a flock of geese found recreation; and men plunged through swamps of mud and sludge, or raised clouds of gritty dust, as they tramped through the city to their daily industry. It resembled a settlement in the American far west in its external aspect, but with the external aspect the resemblance ceased. There was no violence or disorder; no roughs or rowdies. No man carried arms, every man knew all those whom he met, as he might know his neighbours in an English country town. Outside the official class there was practical equality, and a man's social position depended upon his character and capacity alone. The dress and habits of the people were simpler than those of a village at home, and nobody considered any task menial which was necessary to the successful pursuit of his business. Old colonists love to tell stories of Mr. Such-a-one carrying home the groceries of his customers in a hand-barrow; or Mr. Such-another standing behind his bar in shirt-sleeves and open vest; both having attained to a rank in latter times which lends the stories a touch of malice. But this is the common history of new settlements. Miles Standish no doubt blackened his own jack-boots on occasion, and John Arden probably car

*Archer's "Statistical Register."

ried home the dinner of his chief on a skewer; only life was more indolent on the banks of the Yarra, and less coloured by ceremony or chequered by action than in military stations. The settler in the frozen swamps of Canada, or under the biting winds of Massachusetts, had to maintain a constant struggle with nature that he might win daily bread and shelter, and his labour was liable to be interrupted by the savage whoop of the redskin; but the genial air and bountiful soil of Australia tend to create a certain generous indolence and insouciance, which characterised the population at that time, before gold, the great disturber, came; and to the dwellers in towns the native race was not an object of terror so much as of contempt and pity. The colonists were indolent, it is said, but not idle; it is certain that they established the essential agencies of civilised life with commendable promptitude. Churches and schools of the principal Christian denominations had been built in Melbourne, and were served by a clergy who lived in tolerable peace together. There were two or three national societies and the rudiments of a club, but institutions for public amusement or culture there were none; and they were not greatly missed, for the habits of the people were purely domestic. An annual race meeting, indeed, brought out the whole population in their holiday attire; and in later times, when rival amusements are not wanting, it has still the same attraction. The young Australian loves the horse with an attachment that resembles the passion of the Arab or the Scythian rather than the tepid goodwill of the European.

A

In the country districts the squatters reigned supreme. There was some beginning of a farming class, fifty thousand acres of land were under cultivation; but a prodigious expansion had taken place in pastoral pursuits. The squatters employed nearly seven thousand men rearing stock and saving wool, and their sheep had increased. to upwards of five millions, accompanied by a proportionate supply of horses and horned cattle. The fertile lands discovered by Major Mitchell had found masters, and masters who knew their value. friendly critic of the period paints these pioneers of civilisation a little en beau. In a pamphlet, published in London in 1850, he affirms that there might be found among them "men retired from their professions, whether clerical, military, naval, legal, or medical; and the younger sons of good and even noble families, who preferred seeking an active independence to pursuing the lounging life of drones in the mother country." There might also be found among them, however, prudent overseers, and even shepherds and stock-riders who had managed to buy out their masters; and adventurous farmers and artisans who had risen by prudent industry to find an opening in this fortunate pursuit. Their precise tenure of the public lands and their relations to the Executive were questions which constantly disturbed the future annals of the colony. Here we have only to take note of the inevitable influence of a class so prosperous in a community so limited. Their prosperity, however, had not been without check;

Mr. Leslie Foster.

there had been serious fluctuations in the value of money and in the price of wool; but though individuals suffered, the class had prospered. The stock in the colony was valued at three millions and ahalf, of which nearly all was theirs, and the fixed property in purchased land, houses, and improvements belonging chiefly to other classes, was barely worth as much more.

To estimate this community by its numbers alone would give a very inadequate gauge of its power and resources. Every fifth man you met had done some successful work. He had made a prosperous business, or reclaimed and fenced wild land, or imported valuable stock, or explored new country, or at lowest had built a house and planted an orchard and vineyard, when orchards and vineyards were, in effect, nurseries for the whole community. Or he had taken a part in the successful resistance to the Colonial Office on the convict question, or co-operated in the movement for Separation. At any rate, he had furnished evidence of a certain vigour and decision of character by crossing two oceans to seek a new home. And the life of the squatter, who in those days lived on his station, and partook of its cares and toils, and its occasional dangers, was training in a sort of rude chivalry-rude enough, in truth, sometimes. Whoever has seen the charming mansions and gardens, and the graceful plantations and parks which a few of the great flock-owners have created in latter years, will not be warranted in assuming that they developed, by natural progression, from brick or wooden villas and patches of green kitchen garden. In not a few cases they were preceded by squalid huts, roofed with bark, and standing in the midst of shambles or peltries, reeking with foul air, and where fruit, vegetables, and milk were unknown luxuries. And the feats of chivalry were often no more than unequal encounters with the black man. But those early settlers were trained by the nature of their pursuits to frank, fearless lives, at a time when men travelled with no other guide than the firmament and the landmarks of nature, and no protector but their right hands. Highways and bridges or punts there were none, and houses of entertainment in the bush were far apart; but hospitality was universal, and if there were no question of their "rights," of which they were as jealous as Alabama planters, these big-bearded, sun-burnt men were pleasant hosts and good fellows; and, for any adequate public need, would have furnished such soldiers as rode after Stonewall Jackson. The settlement had escaped by a singular fortune-not to be too much rejoiced over, perhaps the suffering and perils which tried the early colonists of America; but if they were not disciplined in war, they had been taught the equivalent virtue of self-help, not having been too tenderly fostered, as we have seen, by the Colonial Office, or aided in any manner from the resources of the empire. Into this peaceful community, free from all gross excesses, not fevered by the desire of sudden wealth, reposing, like untroubled water, under the genial sky of the South, there was soon to burst a turbulent stream, and presently a rancid sewer; and many years passed before the sediment disappeared and the waters were again clear and tranquil.

AN EXPERIENCE.

HE was a pilgrim on a weary road,

SH

The path of expiation. All her way
Lay clear revealed before her, to where glowed
The distant homelight, a far flickering ray
Closing the long ascent; the ground she trode
Was flinty-hard, and flowerless, and gray
As the thick-clouded vault of winter sky
That o'er her spread its gloomy canopy.

Long had she walked upon that weary track
With steadfast eye, and firm though bleeding feet;
Nor timid nor reluctant glanced she back

When the December tempest raved and beat;
Nor when some softer breeze revealed the lack

Of the relinquished flowers she deemed so sweet: She did not fail nor falter; and at last

She thought the anguish of her doom was past.

Yet must she still fare on, in toil and pain,

Though not, as erst, in hopeless misery;
At times she heard faint breathings of a strain,
Vague, distant, strangely sweet-the minstrelsy
Of the far Home she trusted soon to gain,

Seeing its pale lights grow more clear and nigh
As onward, upward, with unfaltering will
And quickened step, in hope she journeyed still.

Till sudden, all was changed-the steep ascent,
The tempest, and the flinty track, and all
The scene of her lone pilgrimage—a rent
In the gray firmament let warm light fall
Upon her head, so long in shadow bent;

And the whole heaven shook off its cloudy pall, And the path vanished in a blaze of flowers,

And something whispered: "Rest a few brief hours."

So, with a thrill of joy, she laid her down
Within her sudden Eden of sweet rest;
Nor was her pilgrim vesture careless thrown

Aside, but drawn more closely round the breast That heaved so high with gladness long unknown; Till streamed the sunlight from the crimson West, And breathed the south wind o'er her shielded form, The dear, unwonted south wind, wild and warm.