The settlers of Australia are as diversified in their habits as in their origin. Many in Van Diemen's Land are retired officers of the army and navy, masters of merchantmen, and persons of respectable connexions. The squatters of Port Phillip are a superior class, although their habits will require time to recover from the deteriorating action of bush life. The middle classes constitute the most influential body in South Australia. The German race are largely interspersed in the colonies of South Australia and Port Phillip. As they acquire the language they separate. Their condition improves more rapidly by diffusion, and their villages are rather asylums than homes. As might be expected the prevailing spirit of the colonies is democratic: the democracy of the middle classes, not of the mob. There are no permanent springs of crime: the instinct of order, everywhere powerful, cannot but be strong where society is prosperous.
The social prospects of the colonists, though not without omens of ill, will not discourage the political philosopher. The various races are not sufficiently distinct to prevent an easy amalgamation. Nationality, whether of Germans, Irish, Scotch, or English, insensibly loses its political character. Hostile traditions cannot be naturalised in a new land: all respectable men condemn the revival of ancient feuds, and they will soon disappear for ever.
More fortunate in this respect than America, in these regions no African slavery exists—the brother will not sell his sister, or the father his son. The temporary inconvenience of transportation will leave no deep indent on colonial society; but the black brand of slavery is indelible.
The liberality and generosity of the Australians has been remarked by every stranger. In prosperous times money is at command for every project which professes to do good, and suffering is instantly relieved by bounty which is sometimes extravagant. The loss of a vessel a few years ago afforded an instance of this. The utmost latitude of beneficence could not exhaust the immense sum (£1,200) contributed to make good the personal losses of a few passengers and seamen. The liberality of the hand is here unrestrained by religious antipathies. Bigotry assumes the character of ill temper and puffing. Two parrots in Philadelphia trained to polemics were set over against each other, one crying all day, "there can be no church without a prelate;" the other, "there can be a church without a prelate;" the passengers were divided in opinion, but laughing walked on. Such is colonial life.
No believer in the glorious destinies of the Anglo-Saxon race can look upon the events of the last three years without wonder and hope. The American and British empires are seated on all waters; the old and new worlds are filled with the name and fame of England and her children. The lands conquered by Cæsar, those discovered by Columbus, and those explored by Cook, are now joined together in one destiny. There are indeed peculiarities in the various branches of the Anglo-Saxon race; but they are only the varieties of the same family, conscious of eternal unities. How awfully grand are their prospects. America attracted by gold has pushed forward her commercial pioneers, not only to the extremity of her territories, but to all the islands of the Pacific. The discovery of gold in California was scarcely less momentous to the Australasian than to the American continent. They are now our nearest neighbours: their markets are affected by our own; their territory offers the quickest transit to Europe; every hour will develop the immense importance of this contiguity—that passage across the isthmus of Panama, once represented as the last achievement reserved for commerce and science in their highest maturity, has already been assured. The common interest of trading nations will strengthen the securities of peace, diffuse civilisation among the thousand islands of the Pacific, and facilitate the extension of Christian knowledge in the remotest portions of the earth. England, the parent—no longer the exclusive centre of Anglo-Saxon civilisation—will find auxiliaries only less powerful than herself in a work once entirely her own.
An impetus has been given to the Australian colonies by the discovery of still richer gold fields than those of California. In six months, more than two millions in value has been taken from the surface of the earth by laborers unskilled in the process, and who have perhaps wasted more than they have secured. The riches which remain scattered over many hundred miles can only be appropriated by the state as they flow through the coffers of commerce. A period cannot be imagined when the precious metal will be exhausted.
The interest excited in Europe by the discovery of new mineral wealth, is chiefly important from its tendency to change the current of emigration to these regions—certainly unsurpassed and scarcely equalled in the world. Here, under a tropical sun, no fever rages; here indigenous diseases are unknown; even those so fatal in Europe rarely visit this hemisphere. The small pox, the measles, and various other disorders fatal to infancy are only occasionally seen, and are scarcely ever mortal. No miasma arises from the marshes: no decaying vegetation poisons the virgin soil. The clement skies and light atmosphere stimulate and confirm the health. Whether long life is the gift of this quarter of the globe is hardly yet determined. Those of middle age who land here find their constitutions recruited; but the country-born come more quickly to maturity. It is probable, however, that the highest average of human life will be attained: fewer will die in infancy, perhaps a smaller proportionate number reach old age.
If the productions of these countries are considered, they will be still more attractive than other unoccupied regions. Nature has multiplied her gifts with a liberal hand. It were more easy to enumerate those that are wanting than those that exist. Gold, silver, iron, copper, coal, and every variety of stone are included in our geological wealth. All the fruits of the tropics and of the most temperate lands may be easily brought to the same table. Taking Tasmania and Port Phillip as the central regions; on the right and on the left the fertile earth yields every variety of European fruits, until the meridian is reached where the sugar cane and cotton tree flourish. It is true, that some other lands present more comparative fertility, but the Australias contain sufficient alluvial soils to satisfy the wants of millions. Washington raised but twenty bushels of wheat per acre in his paternal lands of Virginia. The intelligent Australian farmer often far exceeds that quantity even with imperfect cultivation. Nor is there a season of the year when he cannot toil, or one when the garden is wholly unproductive.
But if the position of Australia in relation to the rest of the world be surveyed, the prospect is still more brilliant. An Englishman measures distance from his native land, and thus his pardonable vanity fixes the Australias at the extremity of the earth. But such is not the real position of New Holland. In reference to the most populous and fertile, or the most ancient and opulent,[283] it has been compared to the frog or soft part of a horse's foot in relation to the outline of the hoof. With the face turning to the north, America is on the right, Asia and Africa on the left. Great Britain, the parent land, is far more distant from most of those mighty regions which feed her commerce and sustain her strength than her Australian colonies. They will soon meet her vessels on every shore. Steam navigation will flourish on the Pacific ocean not less than on the rivers of America. The eye that scans the future, guided by calculation rather than fancy, sees the ports of Australia thronged with steamers, or follows them traversing every sea and ocean, and bringing from every city of the civilised world both merchandise and men.
Thus the progress of the next quarter of a century will be multiplied by its years.