The Sun.
London, England, 1855-06-11 00:00:00

LI

R

Laud, Labour, audtiold. By William Howitt.

2 vols. Longman.
ThO record of Mr. Howitt's travelling experi-
ences in so far distant a colony will naturally ex-
cite some curiosity. His stay in Australia, though
not very extended, has enabled him to form an
opinion on the modes of action and principles of
government by.which the colony is ruled. His
work is not so much a narrative of personal adven-
tures, or an entertaining description of life and
manners, as a port raititre of the present condition
of the inhabitants, with 4€spect to the organisation
of their government and the general aspect of social
affairs. M'any disputes between .the landowners
and the people and the diggers and the officials are
explained and commented on with moderation and
impartiality. The author professes to have no per-
sonal interest in the question, and says that his
purpose has been merely to state, fully and fairly,
what came under his notice. The great dispute
and annoyance which is productive of many evil
results arises from the restrictions placed on the
sale of land. This mistaken system causes a species
of auction among the claimants, in which exorbi-
tant prices are paid for a few acres. The following
extract will give some idea of the evils attending
this method :

"It is amazing to what a price this peddling and wicked
system has fenced up land round Melbourne. We
,think
1,000/. or 2,0001. per acre near London high, but here
it fetches from 4,009/. to 6,0001. ! Houses are fre-
quently pointed out to me in the outskirts, as having
recently been sold, with a garden, for 10,0001. or
12,0001., which in the finest suburbs of London would
not fetch above 2,0001. Little houses in the town which
in London, in good streets, would let for 401. a-year, here
let for 400/. My brother has built two good houses near
his own, which would not let in London for more than 701.
a-year each, or 1501. together ; he lets the two for 1,200/.
And there is a single house near, worth in London or its
environs perhaps. 1201. a-year, for which the modest sum
of 2,0001. a-year is asked I—a sum that would purchase it
at home."

These difficulties arising from the sale of lands are
frequently touched upon throughout the volumes,
being one of the chief causes of discontent, and the
origin of much evil. Another instance of mis-
management is the neglected state of the roads.
In some places large pits were left without any
warning or protection for the belated traveller to
walk into. In others the diggers are allowed to
excavate underneath them.

" I have alluded, a little while ago, to the strange dis-
regard of hum•in life exhibited by these Commissioners
almost universally. On every digger's licence there stands
the strict prohibition of sinking holes upon any road, or of
cutting up the roads through the diggings in any manner.
This precaution is not only necessary for the preservation
of the roads, but far more so for that of human life. But
the regulation is almost totally disregarded, and wherever
gold is to be got the diggers cut up the roads without the
slightest regard to either the convenience of the public or
its safety. You see the roads through the diggings entirely
undermined, cut up, and obstructed, and the unfortunate
draymen, and all who have to travel through them, seek-
ing in bewilderment to find a passage over the heaps and
hollows.

" Yet all this is witnessed by the Commissioners, police,
and magistrates, with the niost perpetual and uninterrupted
serenity. No effort is made to curb the deadly nuisance,
no precautions are used to fence off or close up those open
gulfs in the most public ways. The apathy appears to
pervade the whole of the gold fields and the whole body
of authorities ; human life is a thing that they do not seem
to attach the slightest value to; and I do not recollect a
single exception to this singular insensibility, save in the
person of Mr. Hood, at the Nine Mile Creek. Ovens Dig-
gings. I there beheld, and beheld with wonder, stern de-
nunciations of the practice, and menaces of the most rigid
punishment of it, placarded everywhere by that gentleman.
" The most flagrant instances of this culpable neglect,
however, appeared to me those at Ballarat and Creswiuk's
Creek, because the holes there ranged from 80 to 160 feet
deep ; and numbers of these holes, when deserted, stood
gaping without any defence, to receive any one who passed.
I shall not soon forget the manner in which we had to fight
our way through Ballarat amongst these holes, and over
monstrous heaps of clay, the main road being cut up for
m ilea.

" But still more frightful were the pits in the highway
through that side of Creswick's Creek leading out towards
Ballarat. In that highway there were numbers of holes,
80 feet deep, totally unprotected even by the ordinary heap
of cl ty and gravel round them. The dirt had been sho-
velled to the side of the road, so that along the edges of
the highways, on the part where foot-passengers generally
walk, stood these gaping gulfs, one after another, with
nothing in the world to give warning of them in the dark,
or to prevent strangers plunging into them. They wore
deserted, and there can be no doubt, that if they were now
descended into, bodies would be found in them, if they
do not lie there buried ander heaps of earth that have
fallen from the sides as they caved in.
" The slightest thing done might have guarded against
such horrible catastrophes as must inevitably occur, and
may yet never be heard of. It it were too much trouble
to prevent them being made, or having been made to
fence them off with post cr rail, a huge branch thrust into
the mouths of these pits would suffice to make them pal-
pable to approachers ; at it is, I have never aeon in any
other country on the face of the earth such awful man-
traps in the public highway, nor could have supposed such
possible, and yet I was brought up in a country of mines
and coal pits."

The great vice in this and the neighbouring colonies
is intemperance. The consumption of spirits is
frightful. In speaking of New South Wiles, the
writer observes :

"The consumption of spirits, though large, bears no
proportion to that of Victoria. In 1853, the duty amounted
to 193,2391. while that of Victoria, for about the same
population, amounted to upwards of 600,0001. ! The
duty on wine in New South Wales for 1853, was 32,2961.;
and of ale and beer, 8,9131. : total, 234,4401. !—which is
estimated to make, though so far inferior to the quantity
drank in Victoria, upwartis of 31 gallons of spirits, of 6
gallons malt liquor, and 2i gallons of wine, to every man,
woman, and child in the colony. There is wide room for
reform even here, and the soberer classes are extremely
anxious to effect it, if they knew how."

As might be expected from the large number of
convicts, as well as from the doubtful characters
who are self exiled, some of the inhabit-
ants of the towns ire not remarkable for
honesty. During his sojourn at Melbourne, the
author writes—

"Everybody ought to calculate that the fortnight he
will probably bo detained here will cost him as much as
the whole voyage, and mike his arrangements accord-
ingly; besides which, without the strictest watchfulness
on his part, his luggage will be plundered ; for the thieves
proper are a very fictive class of gentry here. One of our
fellow passengers had his boxes regularly gutted ; and we
ourselves had our mining boots and other boots and shoes.
stolen. The mining boots are indispensable to us, and
cannot be replaced here at leas than 9/. per pair, of their
quality. Last night the expert thieves which England
has transported to those regions, and who have flocked
hither from Sydney and Van Diemen's Land, and who are
every dsy exercising their coavoyaneing talents, robbed
the stable-yard of a gentleman just by. They took his
horse, his harness, and strippol the premises of most valu-
able booty, the groom sleepingln the room adjoining the
stable all the time. The police here are supposed to con-
sist largely of these very thieves. In fact, two policemen
the other day were convicted of robbery.
" But the one great principle of the colony is the Dutch-
man's maxim :—` Get honestly, if you can; but at all
events get !' People avow the principle. They come
here, in fact, as they go to India, to make fortunes, and
then—` go home.' That is the phrase. Everybody talks
of England as home. They are all going home some day.
This and that person are selling their property, and going
home. Others are going home for a visit ; but in any case
it is towards home that their thoughts tend. Hence so
little is done for the colony, this splendid colony Every
one thinks of himself ; there is no patriotism, because no
man looks upon this country as his home. All are in a
sort of temporary exile,—the servants of mammon, that
they may spend ' golden earning at home."
In his description of the natural curiosities of the
country he gives an extended account of the trees
and shrubs, of which there are a great variety, and
some of a most deadly and poisonous nature. In
his concluding remarks, the author reminds us of
Campbell's beautiful poem on the departure of the
emigrants to Australia, which was then a place
little known or thought of. In tracing the future
greatness of the unknown and deserted region, he
exclaims—

" Delightful land in wildness ev'n benign,
The glorious past is ours, the, future thine !
-As in a cradled Hercules, we trace
The lines of empire in thine infant face.
What spacious cities with their spires shall-gleam,
Where now the panther laps a lonely stream,
And all but brute or reptile life is dumb.
Land of the free ! thy kingdom is to come."
And again, while alluding to the feelings of the
emigrant's children, he says in words that convey
exactly the same idea as Mr. llowitt's—
" Not a pang that England's name imparts
Shall touch a fibre of his children's hearts.

How many a name to us uncouthly wild
Shall thrill that region's patriotic child,
And bring us sweet thoughts o'er his bosom's chorde.
As aught that's named in song to us affords."

Though the record of these experiences are less
among the " kangaroos and flowers" of the quiet
country homes than the riots and disturbances of
the diggings, and the competition and bustle of
the towns, there is no less reason to foretel the
future greatness of our Australasian colonies from
its narrative of maladministration, vice, and dis-
cord than from the lofty ideas and eloquent words
of the poet. At present all is chaos and confu-
may behold a very
enfg ex;
to will show
c extract from the
lion,
concluding
anothergscerneem ar
Tkgenerationsheabfoovlleo wri
some of the possibilities the author contemplates :
"Nw
z d
the agriculturist, and the miner will alike
find fresh treasures and fresh homes. The navigation of
the Murray opens up at once, as it e, a whole king-
dom of territory, and bids the squatter boldly advance
into the wilderness, promising to carry down his wool and
his cattle, and to oirry up all that he needs. Nay, wonder-
ful visions, thereupon, of mighty railroads stretching from
Adelaide, through Victoria and New South Wales, to
Sydney itself, rise b?fore the imagination of my old friend
Judge Boothhy, and he bravely asks no less than twenty-
one millions sterling to construct these magnificent works,
with all their necessary docks and stations ; to be refunded
out of the tale of lands and the profits of its traffic. He
sees no less than 100,000 tons of timber and building
3,000,001 quarters of corn ;
520200,00,000 toonbsaloefs
materials trotting clown this highway of nations annually ;
; 50,000 horses and
fat cattle ; 40,000 sheep and pigs, very fat ; 10,000 tons
heyo lavnodol,sttraalwloc, &c.
of copper; 2,100,000 ounces of gold—that is, all the
gold got in Victoria, for not more than that is now getting;
saddle-horses and carriages travelling with passengers, at
the charge of 18,0001. per annum, and a if Mien and a