The Express.
London, England, 1852-05-15 00:00:00

the erprego.

TO CORRESPONDIINTEI.
otoood Mike of " Too Eiptema," costalaial the same eeeei
tiasotte," la published every Tuesday and Enday eight.
lee post.
Utast haeuteatalstindad fee The Express.. londm Estribe
swat be at the Odes, IN Bouveri.atrest, Tao o'Ll.sa
day of pablicotics.

MOE WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE
Tim MS—Nordic lib. Om Afternoon, 12n, ;ra.
TO.N.lllloW—Manung. 12h. 2em Atiemen, 112‘. 4AL.

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 13.

" THERE is nothing new under the sun," say the
Coldstream. of our highly-civilised country, with as
much vexation in their tone as such lazy gentlemen
can trouble themselves to express. "'There is nothing
new under the sun," young aspirants repeat to theta.
selves, half in dread, and half in disbelief, when they
hear the " used up " puppy sigh out the words, at the
very moment when they are planning or contem.
plating something excessively new which is to
astonish the world. Something of the same cold
dread comes over us now when we think of thote
words while the tidings pour in, week after week,
of the poor man—the labourer, the artisan, the
disgraced outcast, the pauper—having found their
heaven before they die, even in Australia,
where they can each make 1,2001. a year (without
reckoning windfalls), with less trouble and care
than they ever bestowed before on working, pining,
or thieving. Is not this a really new thing in the
world? New enough it must be to them. .% humane
journalist told us, some years ago, that walking he.
hind two poor litt.e children in the street in London,
he heard ono tell the other, " Once I had a half.

penny." The conversation went into detail alAsit
tho UM of this wealth ; but the listener's mind um

off on a different track,—on that of the uses of suLi

a fact—such a revelation of the life of the poor.
bably that bare-footed, half-nourished child, was laid
in the ground long ago ; but if she should be abet
ground, in Australia, as the wife of a shepherd, or
journeyman curpenter,what must it be to her to see her
husband pouring out his gold on the table, and tojon
him in planning life on the scale of 1,2110/. a year'
" Once I had a halfpenny," said she, a while ago. It
anybody had at the moment foretold her present in-
come, and if her imagination could have expanded to
receive the idea, would she not have jumped to the
conclusion that in her case heaven was to Im.gin
this aide the grave? And is not this experience,
when extended to scores—hundreds—thousunds
families, something new under the sun? The tivan ianli
who grew rich, three centuries ego, in Mexico &Ili
Peru, afford no resemblance. They went there ot
account of the gold—found an organised socioT
there, and sacrificed it to their own interests. 1,
there anywhere in history, or anywhere now in tt
world, an analogous position to that of our Limann
in the other hemisphere, gaining gold by
hundred-weight ? le there anywhere a case which
can hint to us what their position is likely to
become?

When the herdsman, high up in the table-lands of
Thibet, is as canuyi% as any "used up" Coldstream we
have happened to meet—when there is no sign of a
caravan, and therefore no temptation to brigands to
conic and give him a sensation—when he has followed
his few cattle till he is tired of his rocky walk—
when he has kneaded his barley-meal into his tea
with his knuckle, and satisfied his hunger—when he
hum twisted a new halter from the long hair of his
yak, and made his bow from the horn of the ml-
corn—when he has gathered dung enough for Lis
evening fire—when ho can think of nothing ei-c
whatever to do,and yet may not sleep over his charge,
he thinks he will amuse himself with getting some
gold. He does not very well know what he shall do
with it ; but he will get it first and then refine it,
and then be will see what next. So he
pokes about a little with his staff, or
looks into the watercourse in the next ravine,
He has soon got enough ; and then he takes from
his vest the rude earthen thing—the sort of crucible,
which he carries about with him, from habit. la
some hollow, or the sheltered side of some ravine, he
makes his fire of the best sort of dung—that Alia
will melt iron; and there he bakes his crucible, with
the gold in it, and fidgets about till it is trult re
fined. It has beguiled his hours; and that is a good
thing. Possibly, however, some of the Lamas may
take the gold to help to plate over the roof of some
Buddhist temple ; or, if the temples are all in pod
repair, they may cover with gold the walls and
ceiling of another guest-chamber, in their nennst
abode. He has no other chance. He lives in a bark
tent, where no new furniture is ever wanted. Ile
wears rough sheep-skins. Ile cats black barley-
meal, and drinks brick-tea, which he gets in a-
change for the hair and wool of his herds and
flock. Ho is often hungry • sometimes frost-bitten;
but what has his gold to do with that?
Here is nothing to be bought. Can he eat gold, or
make a fire of it? Irresistibly is this .fhibetan
herdsman brought to mind when we hear of the
largo stone on 'Wellington Plains, in Australia.
where wandering herdsmen have been wont to rest,
smoking their pipes while their cattle grazed ; that
stone which has since been found to consist of alnnst
pure gold. Wo repel the intruding words,—we close
our ears to the old echo " there is nothing new under
the sun," unable to endure the thought that Arista-
lien herdsmen may ever become like the Thibetiaa
Let us assert it to be impossible,—assert it sterna-
ously and constantly ; but let us look well to the
reasons why. Let us remember what all travellers
have told us—beforethedays of the gold—of the brutal
morals and manners of those unsocial beings at the
out-stations. Let us remember that when gold ap-
pear!) on the surface of the ground men's wont
panning work to the surface of their characters.
Let us remember what has happened in that vat
country already ;—that already vineyards, naval:or:
to Rhenish perfection, are destroyed ;—that tlr
breed of unmatched sheep is already deteriorated
that already precious herds of cattle have wand,nd
out of reach into the wilds ;—that thousands of
horses have ceased to become property, and are now
Waning their manes in prairies as far from brit
birth-place, for aught we know, as the Steppe. of
Ramie from the Landes of France. These things are
OD 111111117 hints that " there is nothing new under the
sun;" and that our Australian towns may become
like the Thibetian, where nothing is to lie had but
by a rude barter, on account of the plenitude of gold.
There is in Tartary a strange group of mounds:—
hillocks all grass-grown, in the midst of which a tra-
veller saw a single shepherd sitting with his stun is
the herbage. The place ia called the Old Town ; and
this is all that the shepherd, or any one (Ir.
can tell about it. The eye, following the mounds,
can trace, as in Babylon the Great, the prodigious
circuit of the walls, the spaces of the gates, the
cation of the towers, which the winds have buried,
and where the birds of the air have dropped the
seeds which the ages have woven into a pall. There
life once existed, as vivid as now in Sydney and
Melbourne. There TAMERLANE perhaps It'd his
troops of captives through the crowded streets ; And
there it was, probably, that ZINUIS KHAN repaired
from his feats in China, to repose himself from the
summer heats. Let us look at the Old Town as it
was then and as it is now, and remember that what
has been before may be again, for " there is nothing
new under the sun.
Australia is more than twenty-eight times as large
as our islands. There is plenty of room for our
whole nation to wander there, and be lost, if gold is
allowed to be the solvent of society. the devourer
of all other commodities—the Satan beguiling a
human race to their fall. What is to be- done ' (Nell
body asks. There has been made a proposal to sena
soldiers to keep the population to work at things
convenient to others, bat which seem to them to be
onibjueelel tion that otherwise
e ntio moth": themselves.
be . It s
soldiers would go after the gold, like the sailors, and
every body else. It is a very different sort of people that
that country wants. It wants the pacific, the Indus•
trious, the morally refined. It wants, by hundnsls
ifru the smallest
asilt the
e
and thousands, men who have shown at home. like
the virtuous poor curates of England, that in what-
ever station they arc, they can be tlwrew rot!-
tent. It wants men who can teach that " a man s
life consisteth not in the abundance of the things
that he th." It wants men who love, above
every tih a tranquil and cheerful home after
the virtuous labours of the day ; sweet sleep,
undisturbed by dreams of unnecessary wealth;
and whose ambition is—if they have any —ta
emulate the honours of disinterested citizenship
which they have been wont to revere at home. It
wants women whose maternal instincts arc too Pure