The Sun.
London, England, 1851-09-04 00:00:00

LONDON,

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM TIIE MORNING PAPERS OF TILLS DAY.
TIMES.—The district of Australia in which we
are informed a golden harvest is to be reaped has re•
ceived from the hand of Nature favours far more
substantial than the questionable advantages resulting
from the possession of the precious metals. The
eastern coast of the continent, ftom its extremity in
the 38th degree of south latitude to the Tropic of
Capricorn, is defended by the Blue Mountains, which
rise somewhat abruptly from the plains to a height of
some three or four thousand feet. The summit of
this range forms a tableland, which falls by almost
imperceptible degrees towards the vast interior. It is
on the commencement of this gradual slope, in pretty
nearly the same latitude as the city of Sydney, that
the region is situated of the newly found treasures of
which we have received such flattering accounts.
Nothing can be imegined more delightful than the
climate of this elevated plateau. The air is peculiarly
clear and salubrious, and the summer possesses all the
brightness, without the sultriness of the Australian
climate. The country is thinly dotted over with
trees like a park, and the soil is rich and well adapted
both for pasture and agriculture. These allurements
have already concentrated in the neighbourhood a
larger population than is to be found elsewhere in
Australia at so great a distance from the coast, and
the town of Bathurst, which is the metropolis of the
district, contains already between three and four
thousand inhabitants and many substantial and com-
modious buildings. From this place to Sydney a
road has been carried over the Blue Mountains by
the skill of Sir Thomas Mitchell and the labour of
convicts in irons, by which difficulties of no ordinary
magnitude have been surmounted and the pass of
Mount Victoria, in which a formidable chasm
has been filled up by an enormous mass
of masonry, may rival the feats of Swiss
engineering. It was the discovery of this district,
and the opening of a practical communication with
it, which gave the first great impulse to the pas-
toral industry of Australia, by relieving the colo-
nists from those narrow limits within which they
had been previously confined. It must be admitted
that if nature has selected this spot as the receptacle
of her treasures, the colony has not been wanting in
opening with great labour and at much expense the
path by which those treasures may be obtained. It
is painful to reflect, that while the energies of an in-
fant community have been so severely taxed to over-
come the obstacles that resisted its development, the
parent state should have done nothing to facilitate the
communication between that community and the rest
of the empire. Up to the present moment nothing
has been done towards steam communication with
Australia, and we are compelled to receive our intel-
ligence on this new and most interesting subject by
the uncertain, irregular, and dilatory means of
heavily-laden merchant-ships. It being the plea-
sure of our Government to retain in its hands the
management of the lands of this remote and little.
understood dependency, it ought, at any rate, to
have secured to itself the means of regular and
speedy information. There are very few matters
which will not suffer extremely by the interpo-
sition of a delay of twelve months between the emer-
gency and the measures taken to deal with it.
Should the accounts of the mineral wealth of New
South Wales be confirmed, it will become the duty
of the Government, in which all unsold lands and all
mines of gold and silver in sold lands are vested, to
make such orders as may be necessary for the regula-
tion of mining enterprise. Tne Colonial-office will,
indeed, be endowed with an extraordinary amount of
prescience if it be enabled to instruct its deputies as
to such measures as may be necessary without unduly
infringing the rights of the Crown on the one side,
and interfering with the liberty of private enterprise
on the other. After the abundant experience we
have had of the impossibility of dealing with colonial
local questions in Downing-street, we can have little
hope that a nuachbajefy which has so often proved
itself unequal 'to deal 'easitla the most ordinary circum-
itancea will he•Pteiad'elf at once able to cope with the
really formidable diffictilties of the question. If the
Crown sufferi ell who please to gather gold on its
lands it is a virtual abdication of its sovereignty; if
it impose restraints on the search for gold there is
some risk that it may not be able to maintain the
prohibition. The small number of troops in the
colony would be quite inadequate to the
task, and the settlers would have little in-
clination to assist in the protection of a revenue
which is withheld from them and expended by
authorities over whom they have no control. There
never was a conjuncture more urgently requiring the
intervention of the local authorities; but the Legis-
lature of the colony was expressly forbidden, by the
recent Act of Parliament, from meddling with the
lands of the Crown or the revenue derived from them,
and the question, in all its integrity and all its diffi-
culty, is left to be guessed at and solved as best it may
by the Colonial Minister and his advisers here. So
much for the boon of local self-government, which
Parliament was so emphatically assured it had ,be-
stowed last year on the Australian colonies. Even
should the next accounts from Australia prove less
brilliant than those which we have just received, we
will venture to hope that the lesson may not be wholly
thrown away, and that so pointed a demonstration of
the folly of leaving these important colonies without
any power on the spot capable of deciding on sudden
emergencies, and of trusting to private enterprise for
supplying communication with those whom we will
not allow to govern themselves, will be made convinc-
ingly evident, and that the boon of steam communica-
tion so long deferred may be granted as the result of
these convictions. We have felt it our duty to warn
those whose imaginations may be fired by the alluring
prospect of easily acquired wealth against dreams
which even the experience of California shows so
frequently to end in disappointment. At the same
time, it is only justice to our own El Dorado to point
out that failure in the pursuit of gold in Australia is
not attended with the same repulsive incidents which
have too often waited upon it in California. Instead
of the warlike and ferocious natives of the Sierra
Nevada, the Australian miner will have to deal with
a race of aborigines entirely subjugated, and by virtue
of some inscrutable law of Providence verging to ex-
tinction. Fever, ague, and dysentery, the scorching
heat of summer and the biting cold of winter, which
scourge the Californian miner, are unknown to the
Australian, and the unsuccessful goldseeker will still
find himself in the midst of a thoroughly English
community, where a very moderate exertion
will secure him the substantial comforts of
life in the utmost abundance. It may be that
the prizes are not so great ; but there are
no blanks. The labouring man who goes to
Australia in pursuit of gold may not attain the object
of his search, but ho will at any rate acquire the
means of competence and comfort in the cheapest and
most abundant country in the world. The benefits
Australia may reasonably expect to reap from her
golden possessions are such as many of her inhabi-
tants will value more highly than any increase of
material wealth. The position of a labouring man
in the colonies is already so much superior to that
which he occupies in the mother country that trans-
portation has ceased to inspire dread, and a criminal
gravely asked the judge the other day to increase the
length of his sentence in order to make his depor-
tation certain. Let there be added to these in-
ducements the prospect of picking up gold without
diving into other people's pockets under the prying
gaze of a policeman, and the temptation to crime
will be perfectly irresistible ; there will be a regular
run ou the minor class of offences, punishment will
be turned into reward, and that which is meant to
deter will be the inducement to crime. The disco-
very of gold-minus will arrest transportation to Aus-
tralia far more certainly than the eloquence of Sir
William Molesworth or the efforts of the Colonial
League—and gold, which has been the corrupter of
so many communities, will for once perform the duty
of a purifier.
CHRONICLE.—Mr. Ridgway has just published
a second editition of Lord Brougham's admirable
speech on introducing his Law of Evidence Amend-
ment Bill in the House of Lords; and we are glad to
find that his Lordship has appended to this edition a
copy of the Act as it ultimately passed, together with
a preface, in which he refers to the gradual progress
of opinion in favour of the measure, and points out the
benefits which will assuredly result from it. In com-
bating the very erroneous notion that this change in
our jurisprudence has been effected without due in-
quiry, and
,under the pressure of popular clamour,
Lord Brougham very juftly observes that " there
never was an alteration in the law made more slowly,
even reluctantly, and with greater deliberation—
never any in which popular feeling less interfered."
That this assertion is thoroughly supported by the
facts, will be readily seen from a retrospect of the his-
tory of the question. At least half a century has elapsed
since the great apostle of juridical reform, Jeremy
Bentham, laid it down as an indisputable axiom that,
" in the character of objections to competency, no ob-
jections ought to be allowed." At the time when this
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fore no more than might have been expected, that
opinions which were derived from so questionable a
source, and which, moreover, were diametrically op-
posed to the most deep-rooted professional prejudices,
should for some years have met with little favour at
the hands of lawyers; and our only wonder is, that
Lord Brougham should have had the courage, in
1828, to state to the House of Commons the argu-
ments for the change, though he then expressly de-
clined to recommend more that the removal of the ob-
jection of interest in the case of witnesses not being
parties to the suit. There can be no doubt that the
public avowal, by this distinguished lawyer, of his