A public dinner was given on Thursday, at Willis's Rooms,
to Sir George Bowen, the Governor of Victoria, in recognition of the ability he has displayed as governor, successively, of Queens- land, New Zealand, and Victoria, of which last colony be is still the Governor ; and in returning thanks for the toast of his health, Sir George made an able speech, in which he told an amusing story, illustrating the rapid growth of revenue in Queensland. When he first went there, he found 70. in the Treasury at Brisbane, and a thief who broke into the Treasury on the same night, fancying that assets had been brought from England by the new Governor, carried off that 74d. When Sir George Bowen left, the revenue exceeded £700,000 annually, and is now upwards of £1,000,000. Sir George boasted, somewhat prematurely perhaps, in some cases, of England's having followed the lead of Victoria in relation to vote by ballot, household suffrage, the transfer of land by registration, and a number of social reforms, —from admitting women to the Universities [when did we do that?] to hanging convicts inside instead of outside the gaols. "They are as much importations from Australia," said Sir George, "as are wool and gold," and one of them, at all events,—the ballot,—is perhaps just as likely to cause a depreciation of the electoral currency as the Australian gold was to cause a deprecia- tion of the metallic currency. Fortunately, however, we have as yet only imported it provisionally. Perhaps in 1880 we may send it back to the land from which we borrowed it.
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