Australian colonies

“ Constitutions were granted to the Australian colonies in harmony with their British origin. These concessions of the mother country were hailed with delight in the colonies. The general prosperity of Australia secured peace. Crime, however, prevailed to a great extent in New South Wales, Victoria, and Van Dieman’a Land: in the first and last named, from the presence of convicts, or those who had been such. Many of this class had made their escape to the colony of Victoria, where they committed depredations and violence, and brought some disrepute upon the settlement. ”

“ The staple of our Australian colonies, but more particularly of New South Wales, the climate and the soil of which are peculiarly suited to its production,—is fine wool. ”

“ To South Australia and some of the more remote Australian colonies the benefits to be derived from the formation of such a colony would be equally advantageous, creating an outlet for their surplus beef and mutton, which would be eagerly consumed by the races in the Indian Islands, and payment made by the shipment of their useful ponies, and the other valuable products of those islands ”

“ Australia and New Zealand had been discovered at the end of the eighteenth century, and by 1840 were both recognized as British Colonies. The Government were then faced with the same problem as that which had confronted them in America. The old system was government by the Colonial Office, and in one respect it had been more deliberately egoistic than in any other part of the world. The Australian Colonies had for a long time been used as a dumping ground for social rubbish. ”

“ Passing over the fearful scenes of horror and bloodshed, that have but too frequently been perpetrated in all the Australian colonies upon the natives in the remoter districts, by the most desperate and abandoned of our countrymen ”

“ Many causes have unhappily united to keep Western Australia from rising into notice and importance with that rapidity which has marked the career of the other Australian colonies. The misfortunes of the first settlers, attributable in a great measure to flagrant mismanagement, deterred intending emigrants from tempting the like fate. The man who had the largest grant in the colony allotted to him—a monster grant of 250,000 acres—made so ill an use of the means at his command, that nothing but misery and misfortune has ever attended his steps. ”

“ The Australian Colonies.—New South Wales in Australia was now a flourishing colony, and although at first settled by convicts it began about this time to receive a different kind of settlers. Many of the well-behaved convicts were given their freedom, and they and their descendants became good citizens. ”

“ When we now examine the population, the wealth, the commerce, the sources of annually increasing power and prosperity of the Australian colonies, and the undeniable elements of empire which they enjoy, it is scarcely possible to believe that the first settlement was formed with the overflowings of our gaols and the sweepings of our streets ”

“ If a quarter of a million British subjects have left this country for the Australian colonies in the present generation, there may easily be a much larger movement to a nearer and more wealthy region. ”

“ I believe that by far the greater majority of the settlers in all the Australian Colonies would hail with real pleasure, the adoption of any measures calculated to remove the difficulties, which at present beset our relations with the Aborigines ”

“ Such is a true picture, we conceive, of the position in which we stand in relation to our Australian colonies. Meanwhile, the colonists are loyal, affectionate, and devoted, and (the result of absence and distance) with really warmer feelings toward the mother country than those they left behind them. It will be the part of wisdom on our side to keep them in this temper. They demand nothing that is unreasonable—nothing that it is not equally for their advantage and ours that we should promptly and freely concede. ”

“ There is something almost magical at first sight in the transformation which the Australian colonies have undergone in a very limited space of time; yet it is but the natural result of the untrammelled energy of a race sovereignly fitted to "subdue the earth." ”

“ A Greek colony, for instance, settled among the Egyptians, by whom the Greeks themselves were accounted barbarians. The colonists to America from England two and a half centuries ago, had to contend with somewhat similar difficulties as the first colonists of Australia, but they had not so many modern appliances. The Australian Colonies are particularly interesting, because they exhibit people of an ancient civilization and fixed customs thrown into contact with the elemental conditions of life. They had to start at the very beginning, and that, too, with an overplus of criminal population. ”

“ For the last twelve years I have been personally resident in one or other of the Australian Colonies, and have always been in frequent intercourse with the aboriginal tribes that were near, rarely being without some of them constantly with me as domestics. ”

“ That a somewhat similar system has proved by no means equally efficient in the Australian colonies, is, I believe, universally acknowledged: but when we contrast the state of thing's in these colonies, in reference to the gross amount of their convict population, as compared with the free emigrants of all classes, with the state of things under the old colonial regime in America, the cause of the very different result of the more recent experiment becomes self-evident. ”

“ This was the only instance that I am aware of in the history of the Australian colonies when the members of the Permanent Forces were actually called out and marched under arms to the assistance of the civil power. Let us hope it will be the last.
Hardly were these troubles over when another large body of Australian workers held up one of Australia’s chief industries. The shearers, the clippers of the fleeces, struck work. The shearers are a roving crowd, who move from north to south of Australia’s vast territory and back again. Most of them are well known to the squatters who employ them. ”

“ Of the Australian colonists it is not incorrect to say that they are, on the whole, the pick of the home population. It is perfectly true that a certain proportion of the ne'er-do-wells have emigrated to Australia, and some of them, no doubt, help to swell the normal criminal population of the colonies. But, on the other hand, Australia has this advantage, that the average colonist who seeks a home beyond our shores is generally a superior man to the average citizen who remains at home; he is more steady, more enterprising, more industrious. ”

“ Free colonists, English and Scotch, came and joined it. The discovery of the upland pastures beyond the Blue Mountains, which were remarkably adapted to sheep, made an epoch in the history of the colony. Spanish merino sheep were introduced: wool became the chief staple; the production of it, especially after the invention of the combing-machine, became very profitable, and free emigrants poured in. The Australian Agricultural Company was formed in England. Western Australia began to be settled in 1829, but did not thrive. New colonies continued to be formed in Eastern Australia. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Its political life is at least as old as that of the old Australian colony, its constitution being granted about the same time; but this colony has needed, what Australia has not, the armed interference of the Home Government in its quarrels with the natives—a race once bold and warlike, able to hold their own awhile even against the English soldiers, gifted with eloquence, with a certain poetic imagination, and no inconsiderable intelligence. ”

“ So much of what has been said in previous chapters, concerning the progress of colonisation in Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland, and the concurrent advance of the Irish citizens of these states, applies with equal force and truth to the other four colonies in the Australasian dominion, that, to avoid recapitulation, it will be most convenient to place South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand under a general heading, and regard them as forming an harmonious family group at the antipodes. ”

“ Thus if the intervening extent of desert lying between any of the known portions of Australia, and what may be considered as having been the next island, can be ascertained and crossed over, new and valuable regions may yet be offered for the extension of the pastoral interest of our Colonies, and for the general spread of civilization and improvement. ”

“ These colonies do not depend on ancient names and glory in battlefields for their greatness. They must look to broad acres, woodlands, minerals, and waters. It is in commerce—the trading instinct—where the future hope of Australia lies. ”

“ It was principally owing to his endeavours to get this and other institutions in good order that much of his discomfort with his fellow-magistrates and government officers arose.”
The aborigines of Australia were, even when the [Pg 79] colony was first settled, comparatively few in number; and in painful conformity with universal experience, they have wasted away before the white man, and will probably disappear in time from the face of the earth. If the New Zealander stands highest in the scale of savage nature, the native Australian occupies perhaps the lowest place. ”

“ My husband has, however, been fortunate enough to meet most of the politicians and leading public men, for at Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane the Parliaments have been in session, and this, after all, is the main object of our visit to the colonies. I have before given our reasons for not attempting to visit South Australia; and the Crown Colony of Western Australia, with its capital of Perth and still barren settlements, one would hardly go to except under compulsion. The few emigrants who arrive there rarely remain, and 25,000 numbers the entire population of Western Australia. ”

“ This favourable testimony was confirmed to me by correspondence on the subject with my late much-lamented friend, Alexander L. Elder, one of South Australia's earliest, most esteemed, and most successful colonists. My first step on arrival was to write to the "Commissioners of Emigration," an officiate since dispensed with, pointing out this South Australian success, and suggesting that a certain charge upon the Colonial Land Fund, authorized in special cases of emigrants—an aid of 18 pounds a head, I think—might be made applicable to German vinedressers emigrating to Port Phillip. ”

“ If, after what has been said, it be granted that Western Australia, as far as natural advantages go, is well suited for the purpose of colonization, still it will be apparent, from the principle on which the colony was founded, that its success must be greatly dependent on the capital and exertions of the settlers. The charge of maintaining a military and a civil establishment being all His Majesty's Government was pledged to, every other expense was to be borne by the emigrant ”

“ There was never a time when a certain class of successful colonist did not come "Home"—as he fondly calls the mother-country—to fashionably flicker out his latter days. "A good deal of London flesh," once said Sir Archibald Michie, "is Australian grass." But a very different type of colonist, especially within the last few years, has been in the habit of coming to England, as a bird of passage merely, always regarding his particular Colony as his real "home." The recent Colonial Exhibition at South Kensington brought a good number of such visitors to England. ”

“ Under the circumstances of our intercourse with the Aborigines as at present constituted, the same causes which produced so exterminating an effect in Sydney and other places, are still going on in all parts of Australia occupied by Europeans, and must eventually lead to the same result, if no controlling measures can be adopted to prevent it.
Many attempts, upon a limited scale, have already been made in all the colonies, but none have in the least degree tended to check the gradual but certain extinction that is menacing this ill-fated people ”

“ The colonists in general were to obtain land according to the means of emigration which they furnished, it being quite overlooked that those who took out free labourers could not compel them to work for their exporters, or even to remain in the colony."
Writers on colonial subjects have generally spared but little space for observations on Western Australia, but the disastrous landing of her first white inhabitants has not wanted chroniclers. ”

“ They believed that if half the colony were to be handed over to some 8,000 families immigration would be discouraged, and suggested that if the claims of Western Australian were conceded, their power to divide the land among themselves should be definitely limited, so as to prevent land-grabbing. ”

“ THE disappointments in California had rendered the English public cautious, but the arrival in the port of London of actual cargoes of gold, and letters from colonists enriched by digging, presently brought the emigrating public to fever heat, and thousands of all classes and ages betook themselves to Australia, and a large re-emigration took place from South Australia and New South Wales. ”

“ The mainland of Australia is politically divided into five colonies, which, in the order of their birth, are as follow:—New South Wales, Western Australia, Victoria, South Australia, and Queensland. There are also two insular colonies—Tasmania, or, as it was known in bygone days. Van Diemen's Land, an island of about the size of Ireland lying to the south of Victoria ”