The Sun.
London, England, 1856-09-15 00:00:00

THE HISTORY OF VICTORIA.

Of all British colonies the history of Victoria
Las been the most marvellous. It has, indeed,
been more marvellous than the history of any co-
lony on record. Melbourne, the capital of the
province, was founded only 20 years ago, and it is
only some half-a-dozen years since it was a wretched
outpost at which a few stray ships touched. Yet
new the population is more than 59,000, and the
trade is something fabulous. There is no region
in the world that can give a better account of the
period that has intervened between its rise and the
present date. The trade of Victoria was iu 1854
not less than 100 times greater than it was only 15
years before ; the population had multiplied itself
more than irty times in, the same period. The
truth is, that these marvels of progress apply more
or less to the whole of our Australian settlements,
but Melbourne is the centre of the movement.
Last year it exported gold to the value of nearly
12,000,0001., and from our Australian correspond-
ence it appears that the exports during the present
year are at a still increasing rate, and this gold it
is that has created the colony and sustains its pro-
sperity. Compared with itself, however, the ad-
vances of the Australian region cannot be fully
appreciated ; it is when we bring it into compari-
son with wealthy and long-established colonies,
such as those of British North America, that we
begin fully to comprehend the difference. We
then find that the infant colony is an infant Her-
cules—that Victoria alone consumes of our exports
more than all our colonies in North America.
And it is not merely the necessaries of life which it
thus absorbs ; all the Australian settlements are
good customers—indeed, our best customers—in all
that relates to the luxuries and the refinements of
social existence. The whole of our exports of printed
books, for example, in the year 1854 amounted to
the value of 445,0001. ; of this Australia took
more than a third, the United States took less
than a third, and the remainder was divided in
driblets among a multitude of countries. That
Melbourne took a large share of the exports to
Australia may be concluded from the one fact that
two booksellers in that city subscribed alone for
300 copies of Mr. Macaulay's last publication. And
this may be regarded as an indication of the cha-
racter of the works which find favour in these
golden regions. Three-volume novels are very
pleasant on velvet sofas in gilded drawing-rooms
at home, and seated in the sunshine on the beach
at Ramsgate, or in the large airy windows that
look out upon the sea at Brighton, it is scarcely
possible to screw up the intellect to anything more
severe than a placid contemplation of the sorrows
of Augustus and the coquetries of Laura, to whom
in the third volume he is happily united. Amid
the toil and turmoil of daily existence in a now
world very different mental food is necessary, and
we are not surprised to learn that works of a useful
and solid nature find favour in the eyes of the colo-
nist. These facts are among the most gratifying
characteristics of the colony, and show more clearly
than anything else that can be mentioned the
standing of the emigrants as a class. It contains
a greater number than is usual of welt-educated
men, who in leaving their country have not left its
literature behind them. Melbourne has, in fact,
its daily paper, its illustrated paper, its comic
paper ; and, though it is vastly more distant than
the Transatlantic continent, its relations with the
mother country are not less intimate.
How has all this been accomplished in a few
short years ? As it is gold that created the Wes-
tern world, it is gold that now creates another
empire in the antipodes—that substance which has
of all others been the most cherished and the most
execrated, which the miser has practically treated
as of no use even while he hoarded it religiously,
which the prodigal has prized above all things even
while he wasted it, which poets have magnified,
which philosophers have despised, which moralists
from the beginning of the world have railed against,
and which for the first time in our days political
economists have been found seriously to disparage
as an ingredient of wealth. These last has pointed
to Spain, and compared her history with that of
England. All its wealth of gold and silver mines
has not averted the decadence of that empire, at
one time the most magnificent on the earth, while
England, with only its coal mines, its iron ore, and
its industry, is now the richest country in the
world. That is indeed a comparison gratifying to
our national pride ; but some of the economists are
tempted to dwell on it too curiously, and to sug-
gest that the very possession of gold has been the
ruin of Spain by the lassitude which it engendered,
and that it is the absence of gold which has wrought
such marvels in England through that necessity
which is the mother of invention. Iron, after all,
they say, is the true wealth, and, quoting the
words of Locke, they maintain that " lie who first
made use of that one contemptible mineral may be
truly styled the father of arts and the author of
plenty." We certainly shall not bo found among
those who speak of iron as a contemptible mineral,
but neither shall we be found among those who
depreciate gold, and who attribute the decay of
Spain to the superabundance of the precious metals.
It is, indeed, possible that even to a civilised na-
tion the abundance of bullion may be of no more
avail than the heaps of nuggets in Bendigo to the
savage tribes whose wealth is in their spears and
in the sharks' teeth which they twist in their hair ;
but all nations were not alike, and what sane man
can doubt that, rightly used, gold is a blessing,
not a curse? The history of the Australian colo-
nies and of England for the last five years is of it-
self convincing.
To that history also we appeal as an illustra-
tion of the moral, not less than the economical in-
fluence of the treasure which has been discovered.
There are two sides to every dogma, and, if it be
true that the love of money is the root of all evil,
it is not to be denied that it is also the source of
much good, and that the wheels on which the world
moves forward are ever golden. In a sense far
more material than that in which the ancient poets
interpreted their fiction of a Saturnian reign, the
paradise of the world is a "golden age," and in
the progress of the present time our own poets may
find facts more marvellous and more pleasing than
the dreams of those Utopias in which mankind are
represented as happy in their idleness and wealthy
in their nothingness. The history of Melbourne,
is, indeed, a marvellous one, and those who think
of the alchemists and their theories of transmuta-
tion may here fill their imaginations with some-
thing still more wonderful—a reality, not a dream,
for, as an evidence of its power, it has almost en-
tirely displaced the silver coinage of France ; it
has displaced it, according to some calculations, to
the extent of at least 40,000,0001. The general
condition of the country, too, is as pleasing as its
fortunes have been splendid, and in this respect it
is an exception to the history of most colonies that
have rapidly achieved greatness and renown. With
all the glory that attaches to the history of the
South American El Dorado, it is a glory as of the
angel with the flaming sword—that is, rather a
terror than an example. In California, too, al-
though we have reason to hope that one day the
elements of disorder will be subdued, yet, along
with that hope, 'which the Vigilance Committee is
fitted to inspire as the embodied expression of the
popular craving for peace and security, the very
necessity of that committee is a proof of the back-
wardness of the State, and the American journals
abound with incidents of lawless violence and tales
of savage customs with which the condition of the
Australian colonies favourably contrasts. In Mel-
bourne we find a large average attendance of read-
ers in the public library, a mechanics' institution,
and a university, with a staff of well-paid teachers •
but we do not know that any stronger proof could
be given of the sound advancement of the people
than the fact of the existence of large aecend-hand.
book-shops. In Hobart Town there is one of these
shops the stock iu trade of which consists of 14,000
volumes. It is a fact that speaks volumes in more
senses than ono. And, as these colonists have un-
mistakeably proved their wealth to the world,
we have in such indications a promise that in good
time they will preserve and increase, as they now
inherit, what is, after all, the greatest and most
enduring of our treasures—the English language
and literature.—Times.

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AtEx.
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IRELAND.

DUBLIN, SATURDAY EVENING.

THE HARVEST.

A week of most favourable weather has gone far
towards completing harvest operations throughout
the southern counties, with some exceptions in
boggy and mountain lands. Even these latter,
however, are in general at least a month earlier
than in ordinary years. The Cork Examiner of
yesterday reports as follows :
"In the mountain districts of this county and of
Kerry there are few, if any, fields standing, whereas
having the corn crops gathered in by the firot or second
week of October would in ordinary years be considered
fair. Another peculiar feature of the present harvest
was that, notwithstanding the high prices paid for labour,
the crops in general have been gathered in at less than
the usual exoeuse. This was owing to the favourab'e
nature of the weather, which permitted, or rathcr almost
compelled, the work to be carried on without interruption.
The potato crop may be considered, despite the numerous
evidences c.f blight, a magnificent one, and one that,
while it will prove remunerative to Vie farmer, will
secure abundance to the homes of the poor. The disease
which is k❑own to exist in a portion of it is admitted to
have been confined to the species called ' pink eyes,' and
its existence good judges agree in attributing to the fact
of that kind being old and effete, We are happy, also,
to be able to give a very favourable account of the turnip
crop, which a month or two ago was regarded with con-
siderable apprehension. In most localities it will be
likely to prove a fair yield, while in the west of this
county the crops are absolutely luxuriant."
With respect to the potato there is sufficient in-
formation to warrant the belief that the failure will
be by no means as extensive as was anticipated at
the early re-appearance of the mysterious blight.
Since then, in districts where it was supposed the
clop was irretrievably tainted, it has been found that
the injury never went below the stalk, and that the
root itself remained perfectly sound. That there
will be a partial loss no one doubts, but the defi-
ciency will not probably exceed that of last year,
which, after all, was but little, if at all, felt even
by the largest consumers. In contrast with almost
every other article of produce remains moderate,
and the supplies are enormous. But if the national
esculent be cheap and abundant the farmer is more
than recompensed by the current rates for all other
kinds of provinces. In fact, there is no visible de-
cline in the war standard of prices which has pre-
vailed since the spring of 1854, and, as usual,
while the agricultural interest is in the enjoyment
of prosperity, the trading community is suffering
from the joint effects of high prices for every article
of consumption, and a season of unusual dullness
in all branches of general trade and commerce.