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Otago Witness, Issue 45, 27 March 1852, Page 3

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We learn from the " Hobart Town Guardian' 1 that the steamer " Victoria," Captain M'Lean, had arrived at Geelong from Glasgow, after a passage of 85 days, bringing English intelligence to the 27th October, from which w« extract the following, as being the only paragraphs of any interest : —

The greatest excitement had been produced in England by the early arrival of gold from the Bathurst diggings ; and as further news were occasionally arriving, the excitement was also gradually rising to a higher pitch. Mr. E. L. Montefore, the Consul at Adelaide for Belgium, has a letter from his correspondent at Antwerp to this effect : " There will be several emigrants on board the ' Surinand,' to sail from Antwerp on Ist November. The news of the gold discoveries in Australia begins to agitate our population. The tenor of our advices from Germany leads us to believe that you will have immense emigration from that quarter." The papers are also full of " the new gold fields of Australia," and there are unmistakeable indications of a full tide of emigration setting in towards them.

The Admiralty, at a Board meeting held on Friday the 24th October, decided on again sending another expedition early in the ensuing year to make further search for Captain Sir John Franklin, the gallant officers and crews of the " Erebus" and '• Terror," the missing discovery ships.

The " Weekly Times" has a paragraph to the effect that Her Majesty was about to summon a Cabinet Council, to take into consideration the propriety of restraining the Australian colonists from working the gold fields in the present indiscriminate manner.

" We have," says the "Times," "communications nearly of a fortnight later than our last regarding the Australian gold fields. The former dates from Australia were to J.he 25th of June, and these are up to the 7th July. The subjoined extracts of letters from the firm of Messrs. Young & Co w of Sydney, give the details of progress of affairs between the two dates. (Here follow extracts from Sydney letters.) It will thus be seen, that the certainty with regard to the extent of the yield is con-

siderably increased, and that at all events quite enough is now known to warrant the adoption of measures for promoting an enlarged emigration to the colony from this country. The most interesting fact, however, by this arrival is, that at the adjoining colony of Victoria (Port Phillip) several specimens have been found which indicate a probability that that neighbourhood may be almost equally rich, and which may consequently have the useful effect of preventing a movement of the population from the colony to another."

Wool Market. — The imports of wool into London last week were confined to 299 bales from Germany. The contrary winds prevent arrivals. The demand has been principally in fine descriptions, and is likely to continue so, as combing qualities of colonial wool has been much sought after ; and it is anticipated that the news from Australia will most seriously affect the price of that description of wool, which must re-act on English wool calculated to mix with it. This holds out hopes of remunerative prices ; and, in fact, all descriptions of wool being out, this year's clip generally will no doubt participate in the advantages of a good home trade. ♦

Mr. Ilobbs, the great picker of English locks, obtained his final triumph by having his lock restored to him uninjured, after a fortnight's persevering attempts on the part of Gaelnot, with the report of the committee affirming its impregnability. The Government demand for the repayment of the treasury sums advanced at the period of the Irish famine had given rise to much disaffection in that country, and laid the basis of a new agitation.

i The follow ing paragraph relative to the arrival of the Victoria delegate, J. C. King, Esq., appears in the " Morning Advertiser :" — " AusI tralian Colonies. — It seems that the inhabitants ! of the Australian colonies are thoroughly in i earnest on the subject of transportation, the in- ! tclligence of the formation of the Australian \ anti-transportation league being followed up j by the arrival in London of Mr. John C. King, I who has been delegated by the colonists of i Victoria (late Port Phillip) to advocate the ob- { jects of the league in Britain, as well as to pro- ,' mote the interests of that flourishing settlei ment in regard to free emigration, steam com- , munication, and other objects of like colonial , importance." • (Front the Illustrated News, Oct. 18 J I Fraxcl. —The slow march of events in the ' French Republic has been somewhat expedited i by a misunderstanding of no recent date, which, i after many attempts at conciliation or compro- ' miie, has finally broken out between the President and his Ministers. The question is ci | grave one, arid the difficulties attendant upon ; it, no doubt ga\e rise to those rumours of proj jected 'coups d' etat' with which the public for j the last three or four months have been rendered familiar. The President, who owes his present high position not only to the immense popularity of his name, but to the operation of that right of universal suffrage, which was j solemnly established as one of the main principles of the Revolution of 1848, by M. de Lamartine and his coadjutors, and without which his popularity would have gone for little, is naturally anxious, now that his term of office draws towards completion, that his claim to reelection should be submitted to, and decided by, the same wide constituency which placed him where he is ; but theie are, unluckily for him, and as we cannot but think, still more unluckily for the French nation, two great difficulties in the way. The first difficulty was created by M. Manast, and the other parents of the unworkable constitution under which France has groaned and grumbled since 18-18. Taking the United States of America as their model, these republican 'doctrinaires' limited the tenure of the Presidential office to four years, as in America ; and, to impede the ambition, either of the Bonaparte family, or tho 1 daring and unscrupulous Algerine generals, fostered amid the ' razzias' of the African war, they prohibited there-election of any President until after an interval of four years. This is the first difficulty, and M. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte will not speedily overcome it. The second is the creation of the Legislative Assembly, who, in a moment of terror at tho growing popularity of the doctrines of the Communists and Red .Republicans, and in the fanaticism of a blind and unreflecting reaction, deprived of the suffrage, in contravention of thii • constitution from which they themselves derived their only power and authority, a full half of the French people. The President, to secure his own purposes, desires to restore tho suffrage, thus unwarrantably and unconstitutionally restricted; and, though well contented that the new Assembly should be elected by the small, is anxious that the President should be elected by the large, constituencies. His Ministers, to whom he has proposed to makw the question a Cabinet one, have refused compliance, and have, one and alii sent in their resignations. At the present moment he is, therefore, virtually without a Ministry; 1 .and. rumours of a * eoupd' 6tat,' as theonly possible solution of the difficulty,; are' once more -raised. It would seem, as "we observed a week oir jtwp ago, "that the French people, taking them as a

body, have more sympathy for a violent than .for a legal and peaceful extrication from this knot of embarrassments, and that sooner or later the popular prediction of, and faith in a , ' coup d' etat' will work out its own fulfilment. By presenting itself to the mind of the President as the sole mode of procedure, it may, perhaps, at no distant day, assume sufficient mastery over him to urge him to the commission of acts, from the consequences of which he will find it impossible to recede. Between a republican constitution, founded upon a model which does not accord with the circumstances or feelings of France, and a monarchical assembly, which has no- faith in any particular individual, and only knows that it dislikes the present occupant of the supreme power, more thoroughly than any other person, — Messrs. Lamartine, Marrast, and Ledru Rollin excepted, — the part to be played by the actual Presi- , dent is enough to tax all his wisdom and his courage. With empire as the prize of success, and imprisonment, exile, or even a worse fate, as the punishment of failure, he walks in a round of perils and perplexities. He is like a man on the brink of a precipice, with a yawning gulph beneath hisrfeet, whose only safety is in the chance of a leap across the chasm. If he do not leap, he will probably be pushed over the brink, and dashed to pieces ; and if he do leap, he may not have strength to carry him over. Yet leap he must, unless by dexterously allowing his opponents to rush over the precipice themselves by the very impetus with which they would urge him downwards, he should contrive to hold on, until they have, by falling in the chasm, ruined themselves. One thing is clear ; — the Legislative Assembly has no hold upon the affections or respect of the French people, whether in the mass, or as it is represented by the public opinion of the educated classes. There is scarcely a man of any solid and enduring principle in it, except M. de Lamartine and General Cavaignac, and their reputations are somewhat shattered. Its leaders are either impracticable, though, perhaps, respectable men, like M. Berryer, or wily adventurers like M. Thiers, who have some head and no heart, and who never advocated any cause they did not damage, and afterwards ruin. They all want honesty, and it is in this particular that the actual President, whatever his general defects of character may be, stands on an elevation so eminently superior to every one of them. Some stirring scenes are evidently to be enacted in Paris within the next few months. The car of revolution, stopped for awhile, will roll on again with fresh velocity. Louis Napoleon, however, has faith in himself, and in his position ; and with his popularity, that is more than half the battle.

Tjie of Australia. — From all that I have ever heard or read, the internal resources of this colony appear to be prodigious. Instead of being a land doomed to eternal sterility, as we were once assured, this territory, as it seems, contains the natural elements of wealth in such abundance as nearly to overwhelm the most imaginative conception. During the early part of last year, a bright and even glowing view might have been taken of the perhaps then distant prospects of New South Wales, by reference to the amazing tracts of land which are asserted to be adapted, in a remarkable degree, throughout many latitudes, for the production of wheat and corn ; for the cultivation of the olive and the vine ; for the growth of cotton and of sugar. During that period the same fond expectation might reasonably have been strengthened by the ascertained existence of extensive mines of coal, of iron, and of copper ; and by the further consideration that much of that portion of the soil which is unfit for agricultural purposes affords some of the finest pasturage in the world, and which, having hitherto been the principal source of the commercial prosperity of the colony, might be expected to retain thereafter the same function, and even the more important one of rearing food for the consumption of the people. Such laudatory anticipations, though they might reasonably have been entertained at that time, must have been enjoyed as the prospect of blessings not speedily to be attained. At that time the most sanguine colonist must have

strained his vision through a vista of years to behold the accomplishment of his hopes. But since the astounding discovery in May last of the gold mines, we seem to be " transported oeyond the ignorant present, and to feel now the future in the instant." They, even, " whose conversation was of bullocks," now speak, like Pistol, " of Africa and golden joys :" and this infant colony (to borrow a most felicitous expression) "is about to be precipitated into a nation." By the intrinsic " value of the gold, and its influence on the development and diffusion of its other resources, this colony may .ere. long take position amongst the richest territories of the-earth. — Mb. Justice Dickinson.