MR ANTHONY TROLLOPE AT ROCKHAMPTON.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2684, 23 September 1871, Page 3

MR ANTHONY TROLLOPE AT ROCKHAMPTON.

Mf Anthony Trollope was present at a public dinner at Rockhampton a few weeks ago and replied to the toast of his health. In a style of pleasant banter, speaking as an Englishmen to the inhabitants of these Colo nies. he says that Englishmen at Home think more about us than we 'do about ourselves—not implying, indeed, that Australians ar. remarkable for lacking a good conceit of themselves, but that they are marvellously slow to appreciate the superior advantages of their position, Here are a few pregnant sentences, in which he o mtrasts the condition of the people in the Colonies and in England, in a manner which ought to make many colonists blush for their ingratiEnglishmen always speak of you with decree of veneration and love, and our feelings are strangely wounded when on cooling here we find one after another telling us that the Colonies are going to the devil. 1 can assure you that wc believe you are going straight to heaven. (Cheers.) Although yon all say that everything is going wrong, and although you are all complaining, yet I never sec a man that does not eat three meals a day.— (Laughter;) It is not so at tome. There you often find men that taste meat only tbrae times a year. Here I see no one without clothes, if not of the. best kind, yet appropriate to his position. 'I here you often sec a man clothed in tatterdemalion rags, who wears a coat cast off by some reduced gentleman, that belonged to some flunkey befon him, and perhaps a nobleman before that. You never see that here. (Cheers.) In England they are only considering how to educate the poor. Here the children of the poorcsi are educated lam surprised to find that, even where the population is very limited, a free school is established, to which the children of the poor and rich flock together.—(Cheers.) When I hear you grumble, I cannot understand the language you use. You are impatient, because you can’t take wings as the eagle, and fly right off to heaven.—(Cheers.) You are really in a very prosperous state. As a stranger, I have one piece of advice to elite you—perhaps not to you. but to your children—ami that is, do not be so much in a flurry. When you see what is- your position. and also what you have done, what is the position of labor —for after all, that is the main thing—you have no reason to complain Hie aim of all political energy is to y use the labourer, and the labourer hero occupies a grand position. 11