TOPICS OF THE DAY.
ENGLISH SOLICITUDE ABOUT AUSTRALIA.
IT is true that the latest intelligence about Australia is of "ex. trerne interest," and is well calculated to excite serious solicitude.
But it appears to us that a familiar and continuous acquaintance with Australian affairs would tend to show that the interest is only increasing in a steady ratio, without varying in kind, and that the solicitude should turn upon some broader considerations than the simple contumacy ef the people at the Gold-diggings. As the re- sult of official mismanagement, the occurrences at the Gold-diggings can scarcely be exaggerated. The conduct of Mr. Latrobe,—in first fixing the monthly gold-licence at 608., then reducing it to 308., declaring its further reduction to be "impossible," then pro- posing to abrogate it altogether, simultaneously issuing a notice that it must be collected, and finally proposing a compromise of 40s. for three months, which could not be collected, and which
• would render the impost unworkable in New South Wales as well as his own colony,—is an example of vacillation, obstinacy, and
pliancy, nearly unparalleled, and deserving of the strongest repro- bation. Conduct more calculated to exasperate all classes, to en- courage the rebellious and dishearten the consistent, could have been contrived only by some arch-enemy of the .publio offices ; and it is surprising that the gold-diggers have remained so orderly as they are.
Let us remember that the class passing by that name is the most multifarious in the world. It comprises English artisans, English farm-labourers, Australian land-owners, felons convicted, felons unconvicted fresh from London, Australian lawyers, English poets, Yankees, English artists, deserted policemen, old bushmen, run- away sailors, piratical adventurers of the Archipelago, cadets of English families, broken-down merchants, adventurers straight from the Temple, from London linen-drapers' shops, from the church, the banking-house, the gambling-house, with all the more enterprising specimens of the canny Scot, and the confused elements which Ire- land has ejected in her anarchy. A large number of those people are orderly persons ; even the disorderly have to a surprising ex- tent fallen into comparative quiet. Amongst the demands made by this body has been that of a more effective police; and although the Government proved itself unable to fulfil that first duty of an executive, it is observed that the crimes of violence have very strikingly diminished. In short, a body essentially liable to un- ruly impulses was placed under the operation of systematic caprice by the Government, which failed in its own duty, and was present chiefly in the person of a tax-collector. That representative of Government might be seen ludicrously pursuing gold-diggers, RIC., I cessful or unsuccessful, in a species of game like the boys' chevy or prisoner's base. It is, we repeat, not surprising that Mr. Latrobe should encounter signs of contumacy amongst his subjects, lut only that he should have been able so long to keep up anything like a respectable appearance of Government routine; and it is probable that the substitution of a more effective Governor in the person of Sir Charles Hotham may override many of these difficul- ties.
There are, however, still greater difficulties inherent An the con- dition of Australia—financial and political; difficulties to , •which our attention is only called by these recent occurrences, not newly created by them. The gold is a commodity so obvious, so tan- gible, and so easily appraised, that it naturally suggested itself as a subject of taxation. It must be remembered in excuse for the colonists that the fee on gold-licences is not only unpopular, but is an essentially bad tax. It falls with equal weight on those who
get much gold and those who get none. It is a trifle not worth a second thought to the man who discovers a "pocket" or a " jewel-box "; huts tax of 60s., or even 30s., a month is a very serious draught upon the income of the man who gets the average returns of gold-digging, reckoned to be about 60s. a week ; and it is a fearful abstraction from the very great number of those who in the aggregate counterbalance the maximum and who get nothing. It is an income-tax levied at an equal rate on the millionaire, the middle-class man, the common working man, and the pauper. Deliberate opinion condemns this tax not less than the impulsive argument of the gold-digger condemns it.
It was proposed, at one time, to substitute an export-duty : but there are objections, of a kind less personally exasperating than those which attend the licence-fee, yet more immediately practical, than the economical objection to all export-duties. The grand object of a public financier in Australia was to convert the gold as promptly as possible into a merchantable commodity or a medium of exchange. So long as it was unconvertible or not stamped with authority, and therefore liable to every species of doubt as to its value and amount, it constituted a great object of attention, attracted a large proportion of industry, and, so to speak, locked up the energies of those who pursued it. A man has walked into Adelaide town with each pocket bulged out by a mass as big DS a child's head, and notwithstanding all the gold in his pocket, has been unable to procure a glass of grog; nobody knowing the in- trinsic value of the specimen. The Government of South Aus- tralia, by passing the gold through a local assay and stamping it, and by fixing a price at which it should be bought, presented to the diggers a certain channel through which the wealth of their labour became at once realized. Trade which had been arrested, at once resumed its movement; gold became a valuable export for that particular colony; the golden stream, which had been frozen,
once more flowed through every channel of commerce. The in- stance illustrates the grand object of Australian finance—to keep the gold flowing : and the export-duty would cheek that flow in two ways,—first, however slightly, by stopping the issue across the shore; and secondly, by means of the inequality which the conflict of the several colonies would most likely impose upon the exit at different ports. The best thing, it has been found by prac- tice as well as theory, is, not to make the gold a subject of taxa- tion, but to stop it in passing only long enough to ascertain its quantity and genuineness, and so to impart to it a flow even and rapid.
Much of the undue alarm excited in this country by the in- evitable consequences of mismanagement must be ascribed to drawing English inferences from Australian data ; and to the same reason also may be ascribed the want of sufficient apprecia- tion for the real causes of solicitude. Australia is not England. If it were, we should not have nearly a hundred thousand Eng- lish people emigrating to it in a year. The circumstances are as different as an Australian scene from an English landscape. It comprises elements diverse from our own, and discordant amongst themselves. The most rapid enumeration of these elements will make the English reader understand how strange a region Aus- tralia is, politically as well as physically. Around the shores of Botany Bay there are descendants of those picked felons by whom Australia was first peopled, with the descendants of those free settlers who inherit a contempt and mistrust of their fellow coun- trymen. One of the most intelligent and respectable representa- tives of genuine English emigration, disappointed in his attempt to establish an hereditary peerage in New South Wales, has turned -round and denounced the commercial body of Australia as a swarm of jobbing agents useless to the colony. But that swarm of jobbing agents,—combined with the emancipist race and with a very numerous class of free emigrants, backed by the gold- diggers, and inspired perhaps by some inclination to the demo- cratic spirit which has manifested itself in almost all English colonies,—have been able to arrest the statesman's plan for assi- milating New South Wales to the Mother-country. That com- munity of jobbers is one amongst those which enjoy the largest incomes in the world. Parvenuesethey own and inhabit houses of a rent which, foot by foot, exceeds that of London City or Bel- gravia. In the lower part of New South Wales, now Victoria, we have a fresh counterpart of New South Wales, in a more fertile region, thickly interspersed with those gold-diggers who wear red ribands, whioh is the uniform of contumacy in the matter of the gold-licences. In this part of the world the workman's income takes its standard by the average of gold-digging. While at that occupation a navigator can make 3/. a week and save 30s., a working saddler shall earn in Melbourne 51. or 10/. in the week, or more; and a porter at the quay will ask 20s. for carrying your luggage to your inn or, if you are a gentleman very hard pressed for cash, -will lend you half a sovereign to get on with, and carry your luggage gratuitously, or until you can afford to pay him his fee. The beggar begs for a shilling ; and in the midst of this wealth there is the pallid destitution in the de- pository of Canvass Town,—a heterogenous mass of emigrants who have come to a place unfitted for them. Further to the West is South Australia, where a commerce rooted in a fertile soil, and enriched by traffic with the Gold-diggings, is acquiring a fulness unknown in the history of young colonies ; and where the leading settlers, who possess an aggregate of intellect quite unusual in its proportion to the population, are arranging their constitution under the new act with a surprising combination of prudence and of the most ample trust in popular influences. They have ar- ranged for two Chambers,—one to be nominated, but subject to the provision that after nine years' experience the Lower Chamber may substitute election for nomination in the constitution of the Upper. The river Murray, -which might almost be described as a Mississippi land-locked at its mouth, has just been rendered navi- gable for transport along the whole back settlements of the gold and Wool-growing regions, where gold-diggers and squatters are striding towards the interior. The wealth rapidly bubbling up from the ground, the incessant activity, physical vigour, and strong self-will, and a powerful tendency towards American ideas, characterize the whole of this region ; which presents at once much diversity and a remarkable uniformity in political ten- dencies.
A dependency at the Antipodes so self-willed, moving so fast, is a possession the hold upon which depends upon England's strength, power of action, and will. England may keep Australia ; but she must move as fast, and pay enough in painstaking and cash to retain her place. For example, the gold-diggers might be kept in order, and would like to be so kept, by an effective police ; and England could have police on the spot, if she would pay them enough not to run away. Perhaps, to make that fidelity perfectly secure, each private in the force ought to be paid 3/. or 41. a week ; and perhaps the force ought to be not less than 1000 to 2000; it would take England, therefore, from 3000/. to 8000/. a week to keep the Gold-diggings up to the standard of our own rural dis- tricts. Bat perhaps England would not think it worth her while to spend so much for such an object? This single example illus- trates the general relations of the colony to the Mother-country. Prices are high in Australia, and the price of loyalty is as high as any other. It will be the choice of England to keep Australia or give her up • but if we keep her, the terms must be high. It is a political calculation well worth the working of wise heads.
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