SIGNS AND EVENTS IN AUSTRALIA.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 593, 16 July 1853, Page 5

SIGNS AND EVENTS IN AUSTRALIA.

[From the Timer, Jan. 18.]

I The Australian colonies 'appear to be entering on the second period of the crisis which the discovery of those countless treasures of which they were the unconscious guardians has created. Hitherto the operations of this new discovery have attracted observation from the derangement they have effected in the ordinary course of industry and the concerns of private life. Now we begin to trace the effects of the change in the altered tone of public bodies, in the vast accession of population with its concomitant dearness, and in the cloßer and more intimate relations already beginning to grow up between this remote continent and the rest of the world. Our intelligence by the Overland mail contains several events, any one of which would, in ordinary times, be considered as striking and remarkable ; the passage of the gigantic packet the Great Britain, with her living freight, from London to Melbourne, in eighty-three days ; the voyage of the Formosa, the first ever effected, from Australia to Ceylon, across a vast and inhospitable ocean ; the discovery of gold in New Zealand ; the preparation of a constitution for its own use by the colony of New South Wales ; and the opening of the first University of the Southern Hemisphere. The accounts upon the whole appear to us extremely satisfactory. Much there is un* doubtedly, which we could wish otherwise. The wealth lightly won is as lightly spent. Recklessness and intemperance have possessed themselves of the labouring classes, and the feeble Governments which we have established prove utterly unequal to the sudden strain on their energies and resources. But if there is little to be pleased with in the working of the institutions we have set up, we have every reason to be satisfied with the practical good sense and appreciation of their present circumstances shown by communities placed in positions so critical and so difficult. We believe it would be impossible to find any other people who, with little or no authority to control them, with every stimulous to the indulgence of their passions in the giddiness of instantaneously acquired wealth, and the consciousness of daily increasing power, would have behaved upon the whole with so much order, moderation, and good sense. These communities —to whom we have been doling out one by one, at long intervals, in niggard measure, the elementary rights of English freedomhave clearly proved that they possess within themselves elements of stability, of progress, and of self adjustment, sufficient to show how just were their claims for the concession of political power, and how foolish our apprehensions of conceding it. Take for an example the colony of New South Wales. Although gold was discovered there, and although it is every day more apparent that gold is to be found in every part of its vast territory, the regular pursuits of industry have not been intermitted, the pressure has been manfully met, and the emigration now pouring in from England will go far to remedy the temporary annoyance which has been created. True we read of one gentleman being blessed with six cooks in one week, and of others, perhaps not more unfortunate, who can find no cook at all ; but these domestic privations have carried with them a substantial consolation, and the fulness of the chest has well compensated for the emptiness of the kitchen. The impression left on our mind by the recent intelligence is very favourable to the condition of this colony. Possassing gold fields almost as rich as those of Victoria, it has escaped her demoralisation and disorders, and the enormous expenses which those disorders entail on the revenue .

We trust that the hints which are scattered in the Australian papers ef the intention of the Governments of New South Wales and Victoria to place an export duty on gold, are founded on misapprehension ; such a policy would be liable to many and serious objections. It must be remembered that these colonies and South Australia have a long internal frontier which may be passed anywhere with the most perfect impunity. Unless, then, all three should unite in irapossing this tax, the result would necessarily be that gold would be smuggled into the colony which did not impose it. j^lJow, South Australia, so far from impo*™mj£ tax oa gold, is actually paying, through its Bullion Act, a bounty on its

importation ; and the result, tharefore, of the measure, if inforced, would be to send the gold down the Murray to Adelaide, instead of to Melbourne or Sydney, at a great waste of time and labour. Again, if we suppose the export duty to be capable of enforcement, it is sure to be resented by the gold diggers, an all powerful class in Victoria at least, who would not permit the Government, as our readers will remember, to double their license fee. and who are not likely tamely to submit to another from of the exaction which they have already successfully resisted. Besides, 'such a tax would materially embarrass the operations of the Mints about to be established in Australia, since gold, when cast into a sovereign, would acquire a quality of free exportation denied to gold of the same amount and value while in the state of bullion, a difference contrary to the wellestablished principles of our metallic currency. Lastly, a law which tended to restrict the exportation of gold from Australia, where it is so abundant, would be extremely pernicious, as tending to aggravate the overabundance of this commodity, a derangement the more dangerous as the commodity tampered with, is itself the measure of [the value of all others. We much regret that Sir John Pakington should have coupled the wise and resonable concession to the colonists of the gold revenue with a proposition so injudicious and untenable. Small communities are generally apt enough to fall into economical heresies without our Ministers going out of their way to teach them. Surely an export duty on gold, is no protection to Australian industry.

It is remarkable that the Legislative Council of New South Wales have employed this critical period of their destinies to prepare for the approbation of Parliament the draught of a new constitution. That they should dislike the present order of things is not wonderful, but it is strange that they should have seized upon this moment for altering it. The new constitu* tion has not yet been adopted by the Council, and many of its provisions are open to grave observation. The new Civil List is larger than that granted by Parliament, and though the number of members is doubled, the division are in no way altered. Another strange provision is the formation of a second Chamber out of persons who have been elected to the Assembly, and who are to be nominated for life. Considering the natural preference for the more popular branch, this seems a contrivance for making one Chamber out of the refuse of the other. The best men will remain in the Lower House, and Government will only have the worst to choose from. The nomination for life is sure to end in an oligarchical faction as in Canada, and a family compact fatal to liberty and progress. The proposition of such a constitution is, indeed, an enigma, but an enigma whose solution is not impossible. In passing the late Bill for the Government of Australia, Parliament left the apportionment of the electoral districts to the then existing Council, consisting of three parties — the Government party, the pastoral and pro-convict party, and the popular party, consisting, principally, of the representatives of the large towns. The two former combined against the latter, and contrived so to arrange the electoral districts as to leave them, notwithstanding their superiority in wealth and population, in a small minority. The influx of emigrants and the discovery of gold threatened to destroy this artificial superiority, and to deprive the pastoral interest of that monopoly of the waste lands which has been most unwisely conceded to them.

National Education. — Lord John Russell, on resigning the seals of the Foreign Office to Lord Clarendon, will take up his official head-quarters at the Privy Council Office at Whitehall, and devote himself to the great cause of popular instruction. To all appearance the education question will form the leading feature of the session of Parliament about to open. We trust that even in England a better and more national solution will be effected than a simple extension of the existing system of denominational grants; while as for Scotland, such a remedy would clearly not be suitable at all. It is necessary that Ministers should be put on their guard against this facile but unsatisfactory conclusion ; hitherto Cabinets have been but too ready to take refuge from the religious difficulties of the question in any expedient, however superficial and inadequate. Let the Government sound freely the important problem of National Education, let it stand firmly by the principle that 6chooJs supported by the State should be -common centres where the youth of all parties may meet and learn, that they aro citizens of the same country; let it hold the balance evenly between ecclesiastical sects, permitting the same facilities of religious instruction to all ; and heedless of the clamours of parties thirst-^ ing for ascendency, it may proceed on its course' 1 in confident reliance on. the support and approbation of the country.— tf. J3. Mail.