THE INFANT HERCI7LF.S.
THE moment when the first batch of debentures is being issued in the London money-market for raising the 8,000,000/. which the colony of Victoria is about to expend upon its railways, is a favourable one for considering the remarkable phenomena pre- sented by thatyoung community. In the history of states and
i colonies there s no more striking example of rapid and satisfac- tory growth. Indeed, the whole story of Victoria progress from the year 1851 until the present moment is one that bears so little similitude to the ordinary events of this slow, work-day, old world, that it produces on the mind something of the impression of a fairy tale. That a population not numbering half a million should, without any difficulty, raise a revenue of three millions and a half, of which about two millions are a clear surplus over expenditure, is alone a fact so unprecedented and abnormal, as to make the most superficial observer understand the interest at- taching to the colony. It is not a little remarkable that the spec- tacles of calamity should possess so much more fascination for ob- servers than those of orderly development and growth. Our Crimean wars and Indian mutiny have absorbed the attention of
England for the last five years, during which Providence' unob- served by man, appears to have been partly realizing the famous
phrase of Canning's about calling new worlds into existence to redress the balance of the old. During the seven years, of which the first is marked in the calendar of English interest by the Great Exhibition, and the seventh by the great Sepoy revolt, a solitude has been turned into a nation at our antipodes, and a complete specimen of English civilization, minus its aristocracy alone, has been transplanted from these to Australian shores. Surely the mother of nations should vouchsafe some spare corner of her thought to the trials and the progress of her so favoured, precocious, and vigorous infant. Perhaps if she do so, it may appear that many of the things about which she has been shout- ing herself hoarse in these latter years, may prove of less import- ance than the comparatively neglected, but not the less prospe- rous Victoria.
The importance of this subject, its magnitude, and the variety of interest attaching to it, have been forcibly brought to our mind by the perusal of the book lately published byMr. W. Kelly, upon Victoria. Mr. Kelly is a person whose mission in life appears to be the examination of the early progress of gold countries. In a former year he published upon California ; he has just issued these volumes on Victoria ; and he says, in his preface to the present book, that his next move is the Frazer River. In a literary point of view, his work is of very little im- portance, us it is in that flashy "special correspondent" style with which the reading public is becoming so unpleasantly fami- liarized. But it is not in a literary point of view that the book need be considered. The great interest is that attaching to the repert of an acute and active observer, who has watched this wonderful young giant of a colony, through all the gambols of its golden infancy until the latest months, and who tells us of what he has seen grow up under his own eyes. Such a spectacle has never before been vouchsafed to man. Cities with all their ihried complex interests and necessities are usually the work of time. It is ordinarily only in ages that the nucleus of a military or feudal or royal settlement grows into metropolitan importance. But Melbourne, Geelong, Ballarat, Sandhurst, the capital city and head-quarters of the gold industry of the colony of Victoria, are but the creations of a few marvellous years. Yet in many re- spects the first-named city can for the multifariousness of the objects of interest it affords to the life of its inhabitants, and the variety of its amenities and material conveniences, challenge com- parison with any of the cities of the old or new world. For the capitalist, the politician, the merchant, for all whose vocation lies in the busy haunts of men, Melbourne appears to afford a ready field of exertion. In every particular of moral and material pro- gress, those who love life and growth cannot but be gratified by the rapid uprising, in a neglected corner of the globe, of a community in which the fierce and successful struggle for wealth appears to have been accompanied by an equally ardent thirst for all the resources of intellectual profit and enjoyment, as well as the appliances of religion. Out of the revenue of 3,500,00/. upwards of 200,000/. is expended in education ; as much, pro- bably, as in so small a community there is any room for. The number of schools in the colony is seven hundred. A university has been founded, which has imported for its Professors some of the most distinguished of Oxford and Cambridge men. There is the widest system of suffrage and the ballot, of which all who have seen its operation speak in the highest terms. In short, upon this small community of Victoria, with its seven years of happy growth, the eye can rest, as yet, with almost unmixed pleasure. Except in a few sad incidents connected with the early mining history, it presents the example of a young community, which has rapidly grown to manhood, having reaped all the benefits of civilization with the smallest possible admixture of its evils. The convict population, and the fever of gold-hunting, which troubled its earliest years, were really but evanescent evils. The vigour of the community caused political and municipal organization rapidly to overtake the necessities of the population, both for repression and progress. And now the problems pre- sented to this flourishing settlement appear to be only those, perhaps though the most difficult of all, attendant upon the proper management and development of unbounded wealth and entire political emancipation.
It will be a subject of great and continuous interest to English politicians to observe the working of the thoroughly democratic in- stitutions with which Victoria has been endowed. Whether enough of political wisdom will be developed to avoid those rocks upon which democratic communities have hitherto split is one of those questions, which, though no one can answer, no one can help ask- ing. It is impossible not to see that the experiment is tried under
totally different conditions from those in which the democratic prin- ciple pervades the whole executive and legislature of a state. And it is here that the most practically important side of such ques- tions as these lies for Englishmen at home. For the brightest side of the democratic future of the colonies lies in their connection with the British crown and empire. While those bonds exist, and if they should be still further tightened, as seems inevitable' the strong Conservative element of moral force, which works so powerfully in the bosom of English society, will always be avail- able as a ready and effective check upon political or financial vagaries in the dependencies. Now that rights of self-govern- ment have been conceded in such just and ample abundance, metropolitan opinion, which, in the long run, is pretty sure to be sound and wise, will have its full weight for good. It is certainly true that at present there is this little obstacle to the exer- cise of that opinion, that, as we began by saying, English opinion is but little informed, but little attentive upon Colonial subjects. But this indifference under which colonists visiting these shores not unnaturally chafe, yet has its advantageous side. For it has this beneficial result at least, that it causes these young communi- ties to be left to shift for themselves in those early days of inde- pendent manhood when youth is apt most vehemently to resent parental interference. When a dependency like Australia grows to that point at which it can deal with the mother-country upon something like terms of equality, active interest on the part of the latter will be more healthy and safe, because it will necessarily have to divest itself of all appearance of mere interference. In every point of view we are satisfied that the day is not far distant when the domestic polities of the British empire, using that word in its widest and most comprehensive sense, will involve subjects of deep political interest and anxiety, when the relations between the mother country and her dependencies will be foremost in all men's minds, when the comparative indifference which now exists will be changed to the most continuous vigi- lance of fraternal intercourse and political cooperation. Whether the dependencies be viewed politically or commercially there is ample ground for these conclusions. For we apprehend ,-that it will not be long ere it is thoroughly understood in England that the true region for the indefinite application of English industry., population, and' capital, lies in those magnificent territories and communities, living with every diversity of race and institution under the British Crown. To these in the aggregate English commerce sends as much in value as sixteen short years since it sent to the whole world. Of these one, the young giant which has furnishedsthe opportunity for these remarks, one that has but seven years' growth, and not quite half million of population, is fourth on the list of our customers, being topped only by such gi- gantic population and communities as the East Indies' the United States, and the House towns, which represent the trade of Ger- many. Can any fact be named which more strikingly shows than this last one that nothing which happens in the foreign world can by any possibility so benefit England as the fate and fortunes of her own migrating Anglo-Saxon sons ? To the men of commerce this is already demonstrated. Perhaps it may be made equally plain some day and before long to the men of politics and diplomacy, when the colonies of England demand for their clear and vigorous young voices their rightful share in determining that Imperial policy towards the great powers of the world which must influence for good and evil all their future fortunes.
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