The Gladstone Colony. By J. F. Hogan, M.P. (T. Fishes
Unwin. 7s. 6d.)—Under this somewhat ambiguous title Mr. Hogan publishes an account of the abortive penal settlement which Mr. Gladstone, as Colonial Secretary, attempted to found in Northern Australia (now Queensland) in 1846, when Sir Charles Fitzroy was at Government House, Sydney. This, the main portion of Mr. Hogan's book, is by no means "an unwritten chapter in Australian history," as he seems to imagine ; but the story of Mr. Gladstone's unfortunate Colonial experiment under Colonel Barney has never been given with such fullness of detail. It is hardly fair to Mr. Gladstone to resuscitate this old story, which will certainly only tend to further increase the bias against the former Liberal leader in ti e Australian mind. Mr. Gladstone's doubt- less well-intentioneo scheme was ridiculed to death at the time, as Mr. Hogan point out, by the remarkable man who after- wards became his Chancellor of the Exchequer :— "How blessed the laud where Barney's gentle mai" Spontaneous felons joyfully obey;
Where twelve bright bayonets only can suffice To check the wild exuberance of vice."
But if this North Australian penal colony was a political blunder of Mr. Gladstone's, the story of his treatment of Sir Earclley Wilmot as given by Mr. Hogan, very faithfully and fully, reveals a chapter in the great statesman's career which, we think, had better be left unrecorded. Should the present-day Australian found his estimate of Mr. Gladstone on these two episodes of his early career the result will be most disastrous for one who is, after all, one of the greatest Englishmen of the age.
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