STEAM TO THE ANTIPODES.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 411, 19 January 1850, Page 186

STEAM TO THE ANTIPODES.

[From the Atlas, June 30.] We believe that the question of steam communication with the Australian colonies is merely a question of time. We have all heard that " time is money ;" in this case money is time. There is no difference of opinion regarding the advantages of steam to Australia ; and we imagine that the once vexed question of the relative advantage of the Cape and Singapore routes has been decided in favour of the latter. But to carry the plan — the benefits of which are so generally recognised — a grant of public money is required. And there are so many demands upon the Treasury at the present time, and such loud calls for a reduction of expenditure ; the financial reformers are so clamorous, and the daughters of that great horse-leach, Ireland, are so eternally crying, "Give! give!" that the guardians of the public purse are compelled to be inconveniently vigilant, and to defer payment of any kind that will by any possibility " keep." In the meanwhile, we look with a favourable eye on such demonstrations as those which were made the other day at Willis's Rooms. It was agitation that carried communication with India, and by agitation will steam communication with Australia era very long be achieved. Oh ! for a Wagborri in one country and a Greenlaw in the other, to bring us two months nearer to the antipodes ! We have December and January papers, now just opened, on the the table. A week ago we had February files ; and so our news comes dropping in, without any method of regularity, until it is difficult to trace with any distinctness the actual course of events. It was justly remarked by Sir William Molesworth, the other evening, that ignorance is one of the greatest banes of the colonies. How can people care anything about the colonies who know nothing about them? And how can we expect to improve the class of settlers who now proceed to the Australian colonies — how can we expect to export from Great Britain any large amount of respectability and intelligence, of rank and capital, whilst the distance of the new settlement from the mother country makes residence in tbe former banishment most complete? There will be nothing in the shape of colonisation worthy of the name until Australia is brought nearer to England ; and make what colonial motions, and forge what new constitutions we may, we shall do little to better the condition of our colonies until we bring them nearer home. All this, we doubt not, is so well known at the Colonial Office, that the bestowal of the necessary grant must be merely a question of time. The Oriental and Peninsular Company, whose past achievements have earned for it the confidence, alike of Government and the public, has had for some time before the Colonial Office a plan for the continuance to Australia of the existing | line to Singapore. It waits but for the ac- | ceptance of its tenders by government to ac- | complish all that is desired. It is well, in the meanwhile, that the public opinion should find an utterance. A little agitation out of doors is sometimes thankfully accepted by ministers as an apology for the expenditure of a little public money in hard times.

Madagascar. — The Havre paper* state, that a satisfactory arrangement has been concluded between the English and French Go* vernments, respecting a proposed plan of colonization by the removal of 2,000 inhabitant! from the island of Bourbon to Madagascar. — Leeds Mercury. Emigration to California. — The plains, ai we term our vast territory west of the Mississippi and its tributaries, present at this moment a most curious spectacle — curious not only, but grand. Cooper has invested the journey of a single family over the prairie with interest and dignity ; but what shall we say of our Anglo-American Scythians who are now threading their way in thousands to the land of gold. After leaving the Kansas, a writer informs us that he passed at one time 3000 teams, that he was never out of sight of the emigrant trains, and that for miles a long white waving line could be seen girdling the landscape. A thousand mounted reflemen in tbe United States service tdded to its length. Officers at full gallop rode up and down to control its I movements, like the whippers-in at an English bunt, and a strange orderly confusion marked the scene. How singular is the American character 1 . What daring enterprise, what fortitude, what perseverance mark their progress ! At what do they aim ! Nothing seems to daunt their efforts, and they are for ever in search of something more than they have. are a riddle to ourselves — Amsriean Correspimdtnt of Daily News.