Westralia's Progress.

Hastings Standard, Issue 161, 2 November 1896, Page 4

Westralia's Progress.

West Australia pre -cuts the spectacle of a colony growing with the speed of an exhalation. The population. says the Review of Reviews, has nearly trebled in six years, and numbers io-ilay l:>0,0tK) persons, while every week 7«>o persons—nearly all of of them atl tit males—the population, that is, of a decent-sized village—land on West Australian soil. The population, it is true, is well-balanced. There are at lea<t three men to every woman in West Australia, a circumstance which ought to make it a paradise for sputters. The colony, ioo, hrs iev,x".* habits in proportion to i s iH'ui k ihan any other community in he world ; a frx-t which gives it a volume of working power altogether out of proportion to its numbers. But the colony grows i.i wealth faster even tha'i in population. Its public revenue in 1 ( J0 wa • /.' 114,000 ; the Budget jut presented to Parliament by Sir .John For re-I >hows that the revenue of la t year was i' 1 1. The ha,»py Tre;'Mirer of West Australia, too, is unable to overtake in his estimate- the revenue poured in upon him, and each year receives huge sums beyond his calculations. The process of spending money is of course easy, and like the lion's pari in the " Midsummer Night's Dream," can be done extempore." But West Australian politicians are apparently unable to spend the revenue flowing into the public Treasury, and the colony begins its new financial year with a credit balance of l' ; >i-,o(>->. The (I olden Age, in a very literal sense, has arrived in a the youngest of Australian Colonies ; but, as the experience of ihe older colonies proves, this beatific period is of a very transitory quality, and vanishes even more quickly ihan it appears. At present, however, West Au-iralia fills a very , >aeions and shining place in the commercial horizon of the colonic,'.