Australia in the Magazines.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 5085, 22 September 1891, Page 1

Australia in the Magazines.

In the English magaziges that will arrive this week are three articles dealing with Australia :

In the Contemporary Review, Mr David Christie Murray writes what seems to be the first instalment of a series : it is called "The Antipodeans. I." He concludes his article as follows :—" Everywhere the colonists have worked for the future. They have made railways and roads which will not be fully used for many and many a day. Their public buildings are made to last, and are of dimensions nobler than present needs can ask for. Generations to come will thank the ,visdom and generosity of the men of the last 50 years. In certain places there is an admirable spirit of emulation amongst private citizens, who have set themselves to beautify the towns in which they live. This is very notable in Ballarat, where it has grown to be an excellent fashion to present the town with statues. Should that fashion continue, and should the same spirit of local patriotism prevail, Ballarat may grow to be the Athens of the Southern Hemisphere. The phrase is a little large, perhaps. but it is quite in the colonial fashion, and, certainly, one would willingly believe in the chances of its ultimate justification. The unborn generations will have to thank their predecessors for some of the loveliest pleasaunces in the world. Every town has its gardens, the property of the citizens. Those of Brisbane and Sydney and Adelaide are exquisitely beautiful. But more beautiful than the grounds themselves is the inscription which I found at the gates of the loveliest of them all. I wish I had the ipsissima verba of it, for it is characterised by an admirable simplicity and directness. The sense of it is this These gardens belong to the public, and the owners are asked to protect their own property. There, to my mind, speaks the true voice of democracy, and that inscription afforded me the pleasantest spectacle I saw in the course of my two years' pilgrimage through the Australias."

Mr Francis Adams, writing in the Fortnightly Review, says:—"New South Wales is, so far as the labor movement goes, the weakest of all the colonies. It has suffered the extreme of outrage from the most outrageous politicians in the world. It is the most Anglo-Australian of all, although Victoria just now spitefully claims that proud distinction. It. is tight in the grasp of clique and caucus. Nowhere did labor receive more sharp and savage scourging in its time of rout than here! but here, "here also it turned madly at bay, and extorted desperate terms by the threat of the panultima ratio natiomim —the ballot-box. That threat was held to be vain. All the jubilant _ AngloAustralians at ' Home ' (that is, in England) and ' abroad' (that is, in Australia) were sure of it—oh, they were quite, quite sure of it. Yesterday's cables are the illustration of their surety. Labor will have 30 out of 120 seats in the new House of Assembly. Antipodean freetrade is finished for half a century (labor and capital are at one in that), and federation on the Anglo-Australian lines is at last facing something very like Australia. I have only one more word to say. Will some one now kindly forecast for me the general elections imminent in Queensland —in Queensland, the protagonist of the Australian movement, the mother of the political idea 1 " I In the Nineteenth Century Mr Howard Willoughby contributes "A Reply from the Colonies" to "The Seamy Side of Australia." He says "Mr Fortescue's paper purports to be a review' of Lord Carringtoti's address, 4 Australia as I saw it,' and of Mr Charies Fairfield's essay, entitled, ' State Socialism in the Antipodes, ' which forms part of the anti-Socialis-tic volume, 'A Plea for Liberty.' A friendly painter such as Lord Carrington will naturally give the better side of the face, but Australians would be poor creatures if they objected to others showing the less pleasing portion. But if the friend should not idealise, neither should the foe disfigure, the subject. And while a social writer may romance a little either way, a financial accountant who .boldly attacks our national credit is supposed to grasp the case and to be accurate in his figures. In this instance, however, if Mr Fortescue had checked his data he could scarcely ha ve penn ed his accusation. Of course Australia has its seamy side, for that is only to ?ay that good and evil exist there as elsewhere. It is idle to say that there is no extravagance in Australia, or to aver that there have been no mistakes and no follies in the expenditure of the loan money. All that can be pleaded is that the errors and the waste have probably been no greater in the colonies than elsewhere. As regards railways in particular, every system would appear to have its peculiar faults. Under Government construction we escape from the promoter of bogus lines, only to confront the log-roller. The colonies are certainly not content with State railway management Are the users of railways in Great Britain, in the, United States, and in Canada absolutely satisfied with their private management'? Again, it must by freely conceded to the critics that when money is cheap, and is readily loaned, each of the colonies in turn seems to be tempted to borrow to excess. The people forget that excessive expenditure on public works demoralises the labor market, and does actual mischief by checking the improvement of private estates. They revel in the fictitious prosperity which is created, and do not see the inevitable reaction. But, on the other hand, this exaltation, which is called a ' boom' period, does notlast long ; and so soon as men's eyes are opened they cheerfully accept the situation and seek to rectify the The experience of a people in power in the colonies is that they are easily led astray by the demagogue or the plunger, but that they readily return to right courses when the mistake is discovered.