QUEENSLAND.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVII, Issue 1351, 20 November 1860, Page 3

QUEENSLAND.

Europe, Asia, and, we might add, America, piesent to us at this moment much movement with very little piogiesa. Old faiths and traditions give way, and nothing rises up to supply thoir place. Baibarism has lost its energy, and civilization seems arrested in its onward caieer. In Russia and Turkey we behold Governments losing their hold on the affection and reverence of peoples without having cieated anything to supply the void which they are about to make. In France and Germany we see the energies of great nations frittered away by unworthy jealousies ■within, or in still more unworthy ambitionb beyond the frontier. Italy is in the crisis of a revolution, to which the most sanguine do not ventvue to attiibutc a. permanent success. Spain has wasted that strength in an aboxtive foreign war which she needs to consolidate and secure such libeity as she has saved out of so many revolutions and so many civil wars. It is refreshing to turn from this scene of blind and short-sighted ambition, from the doings of States that seem to know no other means of increasing their wealth and power except such as were known to Pagan Europe in the days of Macedon and of Rome, to the first efforts of young and prosperous communities developing, with the order and regulaiity of one of the vegetable products of nature, the elements of present freedom and future prosperity. In a remote corner of Australia, some six or seven hundred miles to the north of the original settlement of Sydney, is situated a vast territory, the very name of which is scarcely known to a large number of our reader*. The district of Moreton Bay, originally used as a convict station, appears, if wo may believe the account* we receive of it, to be among the most favoured regions of the world. It is placed at the commencement of that long barrier reef of coral which, running parallel with the north-eastern coast of the Australian continent, provides a smooth and delightful passage to the navigator who would thead the mazes of the Oriental Archipelago. Unlike most parts of Australia, the land adjacent to the coast is watered by a succession of fine rivers, and is within a moderate distance of their course exuberantly fertile. The climate is warm, but exceedingly healthy. The woods are beautifu 1 , and require only to be known to become a valuable article of commerce. At a moderate distance from the sea the land rises for several thousand feet into a succession of beautiful downs, enjoying all the freshness of a temperate climate, and covered by innumerable flocks and herds. This colony, after a long and arduous [ struggle, has obtained that which aeoms to be the gi eat ambition of all such communities — a separation from the laiger and older society to which it is attached. AYith a territory three times the size of France, and a population of some five-and-twenty thousand souls, Moreton Bay — or Queensland, as it is now to be called —has entered with the utmost confidence and hope on the caieer of self-go vemment. This small and remote population supplies the materials for two Legislative Chambers, and bears into the remote legions of the far East the feelings, the habits, and the customs of our ancient nvwaichy. With such simple pomp as the reresources at his command can furnish, the first Go-

vornor, Sir George Bowen, late Colonial Secretary of . tho Ionian Islands, opens his first Parliament. We are favoured with a copy of his Excellency's speech, similar in tone, and by no means inferior in style, to the documents it professes to imitate. Let us see what are the subjects to which the Attention of this new people is | called by their Frsfc Magistrate on that interesting and memorable day which places them for tho first time in the possession of the inestimable gift of self-government. The Constitution Act seems to be a little clumsy and , unwieldy. The law officers of the Crown advise that the elections cannot legally begin till the 27th of April, and it is not therefore surprising that the Parliament of Qneensland was unable to meet till the auspicious anniversary of the 29th of May^ on the thre8hcl I of the first winter month of those Antipodean regions. The first business is to alter the Act giving the Constitution, so as to cut down the Upper House to a number more consistent with the \\ ants of the colony than the original instrument seems to have contemplated. Then we have the question of State assistance to public worship, which is broadly left to the consideration of the Legislature, with the very sensible recommendation that it should be guided by no abstract theories, but only by the wants and requirements of the country. Primary education follows follows next, together with a recommendation, unique, as far as we are aware, in the colonies, loi the foundation of a High School with a number of exhibitions to the Universities of the mother conntiy open to competition among the students. That such a scheme should be considered feasible gives us a high idea of the wealth of the community ; that it should be thought deshable,is no inconsideiable proof of their good sense and attachment to the parent State. Then follows the appointment of Commissioners for the apportionment of the public debt between New South Wales and Queensland, an arrangement in which we may be permitted to fiope the patent will deal liberally with his sturdy offspring. The police are to be thoroughly organised, a system of annual statistics is to be formed, and an electric telegraph laid down for the purpose of uniting Queensland to the other colonies of the Australian group, and to this is added a project for an electric line to Batavia, in Java, which would complete the telegiaphic communication between Sydney and Melbourne and Singapore, and shortly with England. There is also a scheme for steam navigation in the Eastern Archipelago, which we cannot help feeling is, like the electric telegraph, destined to struggle with many obstacles before its final completion. Of course, the address of no Colonial Governor would be complete without the introduction of a Land Bill and a measure for the purposes of immigration, in the course of which the Governor does not omit to suggest the grant of a remission of the purchase-money of land to immigrants who pay for their own passages. The fact is noticed that Queensland already contains seveial coins of Volunteeio, and after an address to the gentlemen of the Assembly and the gentlemen of the Legislative Council, quite in the English taste, the speech concludes with a pi ay er foamed exactly on the. model of that which ordinarily terminates the address of our own giacious Sovereign. This speech and these incidents, trivial and commonplace as they may appear, have in our own minds a very high significance. After so many wars and revolutions it still continues to be tiue, as it was in the time of Burke, eighty years ago, that slavery can be had anywhere, but that freedom is that pearl of great pi ice of which England alone has the monopoly. With no other arms but our industry, our commercial spirit, and the expansive freedom of our institutions, while other countries barely maintain their position, we are enabled to cover the world with communities the faithful patterns of their mother country, and destined, we believe, not only to preserve our language, our arts, and our institutions, but to become in their turn the mothers of other colonies, and thus, in a circle giadually inci easing, to spiead our language, manners, arts, and ideas to the remotest corners of the earth. It ifa impossible to view, even from this remote distance, scenes like that we have endeavoured to describe without the liveliest emotions of national pride. How vain and absuid is it to attribute to England those vulgar schemes of common-place ambition which our neighbours so aidently pursue, when, -without a cinne and without a tear, without doing wrong to any one, and even with the greatest advantage to herself, England is able to give permanence and consistency to an Empiie moio vast than the proudest conqueror ever dieamt of, and stronger and moie homogeneous than was ever cemented by the action of the sword ' — Evening Mail.