PROGRESS OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

Tins colony is yet too young to go alone ; and it also requires correction, like most children : we shall neither desert it prema- turely, nor spare the rod in due season.

By a vessel coming direct from Port Adelaide, in Gulf St. Vincent, we have received the Second Number of the South Aus- tralian Gazette, (the First Number was published in London,) together with a mass of journals and letters. The intelligence thus conveyed is of a mixed nature, being good and bad, both in a 'high degree. We shall begin with the good. All accounts, without a single exception, give a most favourable description of the climate and country. Nowhere else in Aus- tralia has such fertile land been discovered close to the sea. Around the site of the town of Adelaide, undulating plains of great extent, and thinly studded with trees, like an English park, seem equally fit for agriculture and pasturage. Sheep and cattle imported, feeding on the natural grasses, have quickly improved in appearance and increased in weight. The soil, wherever any thing has been planted in it, has yielded a plentiful return. During the whole summer there bad been abundance of grass for cattle; and the pasturage was improving as winter approached. This is a common thing in Australia, but has been remarkably conspicuous in Glenelg Plains. There has been nothing like drought during the summer ; and the beginning of winter is described as resembling the spring in the South of Spain. The colonists were in a most healthy state, although many of them had but recently landed after a four months' voyage. Inasmuch as the labouring emigrants consisted chiefly of young married couples, there were numerous indications of a coming increase to the infant population of the colony. The number of babies was already remarkable. The choice of the site of the town of Adelaide is highly approved of by nearly all our correspondents; but there is a small party in the colony, headed by the Governor, who object to the distance of the town from the port, (seven miles,) and to the port itself as being unfit for vessels of large burden. As the controversy on this point has no interest here—as the site of the chief town is Irrevocably fixed—as the great bulk of the colonists warmly ap- prove of it—and as we are assured by persons of competent knowledge, that the port, with its roadstead in St. Vincent's Gulf, is superior to that of Liverpool—we shall only observe, that, in a new and pastoral colony especially, it is very advantageous that the chief town should be away from the demoralizing influ-

ence of a sea-port, and that the absurd extravagance of the letters Which we have seen from the Governor and his two or three parti- sans, abusive of the choice made by Colonel LIGHT the Surveyor- General, deprives their testimony of all weight. Indeed, we have little doubt that the controversy has wholly arisen frotn the Governor's jealousy of the autherity vested in the Surveyor- General to select the site of the chief town.

The site of Adelaide has been surveyed, measured, and divided snto streets, squares, and (in round numbers) 1000 sections of one

4cre each. Five hundred sections had been purchased in Englauds These were first selected yet of the *Hole nu,esher, The remainder were then put up to sale bY studied' 'The tritthilion of the best of

them, of course, was considered hartiff eligible as that of the worst of those which had been previously sel6cfed. Yet the whole of them were sold to a great number of buyers, in one day, at the average price of 61. Os. 9d. per acre • and were paid for in cash to the amount of 84941. 4s., which has been remitted to the Com- missioners in England for the purposes of emigration. This sale

is, we are surerunexampled in the history of colonization. Ruth illus-

trates the soundness of the peculiar system on which this colony was founded. The price required for wasteland, inasmuch as it restricts appropriation, keeps the people together ; there is no injurious dispersion ; the people begin with a town, as should always be the case in order to preserve civilization; and the town makes the country. The purchase-money of land has supplied labourers; this has attracted capital ; so that there are the means (which never happened before in a new colony without slaves or convicts) of beginning with a town—with houses in streets and squares, churches and chapels, government buildings, a market, a cemetery, and so forth.

With the exception already alluded to, of a very foolish Go- vernor and one or two persons who do what they please with him, perfect harmony seems to prevail in the colony ; which numbered, when the last accounts came away, about 1,200 souls. Nearly 1,000 persons have since departed from England. The manage- ment of the emigrant ships has been excellent. We have seen nu- merous letters from labouring emigrants, and have neither seen nor heard of one which speaks otherwise than in high terms of the accommodation and treatment on board vessels sent out by the Commissioners. This deserves the more notice in consequence of recent accounts from the Cape of Good Hope,* of terrible suffering by poor emigrants on board a vessel despatched from Scotland for New South Wales without the superintendence of a known and responsible authority. The population of all the Soulh ilastralian emigrant ships has increased during the passage, and the number of deaths has been less than would probably have taken place amongst the same people if they had remained on shore. In no ship has there been either insubordination or discontent. So muck for selection as to character, and a system of mane:lenient—so much, in one word, for responsibility. But the wellbeing of the poor emigrants during their passage is not more gratifying than the accounts of the demand for their services in the colony. The amount of capital existing there, and the enterprise of those who possess it, are really astonishing. All our letters agree on this point. We have now done with the favourable side ol the picture. On the other hand, the surveying force sent out by the Com- missioners has proved altogether insufficient to meet the demand for land. This seems to have arisen from three causes : first, the

number of assistant surveyors was inadequate; secondly, some of these know little or nothing of the art which they profess; and lastly, the demand for labour in the colony so far exceeds the

supply, that the Surveyor.General cannot obtain enough working hands for carrying on the surveys. " More, and more efficient surveyors, and, above all, more working hands"—this is the cry of nearly all the letters. All our correspondents, however, with the exception of the Governor and the two or three people who manage him, speak of Colonel Linnet in terms of adunration and

of gratitude for his services.

In the next place, the inadequacy of the supply of labour exerts a most pernicious influence on the moral state of the colony. Wages are enormous, (six shillings a-day for the commonest em- ployments,) and the bead of the labouring man is turned'. The servant becomes the master, and the relations of society are broken

up. The poor itl o who could but just keep 1) y and soul

together in England, grows suddenly rich beyond his hope even he attributes this to his own good fortune; and becomes insubordi- nate, insolent, and in too many cases a reckless drunkard. "Set a beggar on horseback," &c. Moreover, an absolute want of labour at any price, paralyses industry : capital is lying idle, and is wasting or perishing for want of labourers to employ it ; and there is ample employment at good wages for two or three times as many labourers as have been sent out. This statement comes to us from all quarters; and we are implored to urge thus publicly on the Commissioners the necessity of sending out more labourers without delay. The Commissioners are to blame, we think, for the evil that has happened. We know that, during last year, they sent out a far less number of working-people than they had positively promised to the emigrating capitalists whom they con- sulted as to the probable demand for labour ; and we know also that they were vehemently urged, by one who foretold precisely what has happened, to keep their promise and even to exceed it. The remedy, however, is in their own hands. Expressly in order to meet such a case as the present, the South Australian Act authorizes the Commissioners to raise money for emigration on the security of future sales of land. In the name, then, of the whole colony, and of numbers here who as owners of land and revenue bonds are deeply interested in its success, we call upon the Commissioners to exert the powers which Parliament has be-

stowed upon them, not for show, but for practical use. If South Australia were their own estate, there can be no doubt about what they would do. Let them not forget, however, that this interest- ing colony is public property, and that they can be wade to answer for any gross neglect of its interests. Finally, the Governor, Captain HIM:MARSH, R.N., seems quite unfit for his office. A gallant sailor as ever lived, and a worthy

• shIs City Wide in the Times g Wedreeday Wt. private character, he is really worse than good for nothing in every other respect. Intemperate, meddling, childishly jealous of his authority, profoundly ignorant of the principles on which the colony is founded—of legislation, civil polity, and human nature off the quarter-deck, his government reminds one of Sancho Panza's, though to the advantage of Don Quixote's squire. We would not say this of any man, still less of one who is absent, sinless intimately convinced of its truth and moved by a para- mount sense of duty to the helpless thousands who suffer from the gallant officer's remarkable unfitness to be governor of an infant colony. Such a chief magistrate, of course, is always in the hands of other people, but never long under the same guidance. Besides being the laughingstock, therefore, he is also the bane of the colony. We are ready to maintain this description of' him against any who: may question it. Whose fault was the appointment of such a man, to conduct so delicate and .difficult an experi- ment? The appointment rests, in form, with the Colonial Office, but was not made by it. We are not apt to praise the Colonial Office people, but will always do them jus- tice to the best of our knowledee and conscientious judgment. Be it known, then, that informally appointing this political curio- sity to be "Governor and Captain-General of the province of South Australia," Lord GLENELG gave up so much patronage, and merely attended to the strong recommendation of the Commis- sioners; to whom, therefore, in fact, he abandoned the appoint- ment. They really appointed Captain HINDMARSH,—being igno- rant, of course, of his true character; for we do not accuse them of any jobbing—the reproach against them being, that he was a stranger to them all, when they recommended him to Lord GLENELG. But further, all of them did not remain ignorant of his character up to the time of his departure ; and these, surely, are to blame for not having, when they had discovered their error, humbled themselves before Lord GLENELG, and acknow- ledged that error which has been so very injurious to the colony. Common justice to the Colonial Office required these remarks : we are ready to maintain them. Nevertheless, we do not at all despair of the colony. On the contrary, the remarkable success of the experiment, so far as it has been properly worked, assures us that with more surveyors, a great many more labourers, to be sent out immediately, and with a reliable man for Governor instead of this unhappy nominee ef the Commissioners, all will go well, and more than well. The prin- ciples of the colony are fully borne out, even by the defective practice of those who undertook to carry them into execution. May no precious time be lost in improving the latter ! With this wish we dismiss the subject for the present, but shall return to it at greater length in case of need.