The Press.
London, England, 1856-03-29 00:00:00

This immobility is one of the most excellent
fruits of the aristocratic habit. Nor is this
all. A combination of solidity and refinement
is the best definition of the English character.
In our rural districts, among our villages with
their orchards and gardens, our churches with
their old grey towers, our manor houses with
their stately woods, are nurtured those gene-
rous and tender affections which communicate
an indescribable refinement to both mind and
manners which make our men both gentle and
brave, our women both graceful and virtuous,
and of which that untranslateable English
word " home " is the complete embodiment.
Yet this state of feeling can only grow up
and ripen in a country which has enjoyed a
long summer-tide of order and quietude—
where century is linked to century, and gene-
ration to generation, by immemorial tradi-
tions— where the intercourse of classes is
softened and illumined by associations of a
thousand years. Our villages, and churches,
and halls, are but so many perpetual me
mentos of this order, these traditions, and
these associations. But these would soon
lose their charm when our aristocracy ceased
to be leaders, for then the link of association
would be broken. And our aristocracy would
soon soon cease to be leaders when their free
and natural action was choked in the sickly
atmosphere of clerkdom.

COMMUNICATION WITH THE

AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.
SIR JOHN PAKINOTON has given notice that
he will call the attention of the House of Com-
mons to the conduct of the Lord of the Trea-
sury in relation to the postal service with
Australia.

The Australian Colonies are the best market
England now has in the whole world. The
value of our exports to the United States ex-
ceeds, but will not long exceed, the value of
our exports to Australia. The difference
amounts to about a million sterling: against
that million paid by foreigners is the fact, that
the colonists are our fellow-subjects, whose
prosperity is still British prosperity. The
value of British exports to Australia is double
that of our exports to the East Indies ; six
times that of our exports to British North
America ; six times that of our exports to
France ; six times that of our exports to the
West Indies. The war notwithstanding, great
contract and postal steam services have been
maintained to India, the West Indies, America,
Brazil, &c. But for seventeen months. on the
pretext of the war, there has been no steam
postal service to Australia. The only commu
nication, except occasionally and almost acci-
dentally by Panama, has been by means of
the clipper-ships of Liverpool, which occupy
an average of ninety days in their passage
During these seventeen months, the Bank of
England depended on Australian supplies of
gold to save us from a commercial crisis. In
those seventeen months, the interest lost on
money floating three months at sea would
have built a steam fleet of twenty vessels each
of the size, power, and speed, of the Perna or
the Himalaya. The Australian Colonies, un-
dergoing commercial derangement from over-
speculation brought about by tardy communi-
cation with the mother country, are deeply
indebted to the Governments of LORD ABER-
DEEN and LORD PALMERSTON.

In 1832, a steam service to Australia, on
alternate months, was organized ; one month
via the Cape of Good Hope, by the General
Screw Steam-Ship Company, and the other
month via Suez, by a link line of the Penin-
sular and Oriental Company from Point de
Galle to the Colonies. The first was a dead
failure, as the Government was told it would
be. The other was not satisfactory, the boats
being neither fast nor or good accommodation.
But such as it was, it was abandoned on the
breaking out of the war. The steamers that
were engaged in that service are now in the
opium trade to China, so that they could not
hive been required fin• the tiansport of troops
to the Crimea, or the replacement of the
steamers that were so employed by the Go-
vernment. But the Peninsular and Oriental
Company did not like the contract, had no