Large deposits of minerals are already beginning to bring wealth to the settlers. Coal has been found. The tide of emigration which some years ago was checked, has suddenly flowed with increased force to Australia; and the vigour of the English character, the only character in the world capable of effective colonisation, has already made Sidney a flourishing metropolis, and before another century (a moment in the life of nations) will exhibit to Europe an English empire at the antipodes! And this is the history of a land which, though coasted by the celebrated Cook in 1770, was never trod by a colonist till nearly twenty years after. This wonder has been wrought within the lifetime of one generation.
Van Diemen's Land affords a striking evidence of the variety in which nature seems to delight. It forms a contrast in everything to its huge neighbour: it is small, it is a mass of mountains, it is well watered, it is rainy, it is agricultural, and it abounds in fine harbours. On the whole, it bears the same relation to Australia which Ireland might bear to England, if England were united to the Continent. It is also about the size of Ireland—Van Diemen's Land containing nearly twenty-eight thousand square miles, Ireland perhaps thirty thousand.
In Europe, the continent is richer than the islands; at the antipodes, the islands are richer than the continent. New Zealand, the last colony of England, promises to be one of the noblest of the British possessions. It may either be regarded as one island, fifteen hundred miles long, or as three, divided by boisterous channels, and lashed everywhere by a roaring ocean. It has remarkable advantages for colonisation—a fertile soil, boundless forests, beds of minerals, and picturesque beauty. The mountains in its interior have all the grandeur of the Alps, with more than their forest clothing, and (more picturesque than all) with the volcano, which is wanting to the supremacy of the Alps. It has table-lands for the agriculturist, sites on a luxuriant coast for cities, fine harbours for commerce, copious rivers for communication, and mountains of from twelve to fourteen thousand feet high, to irrigate the soil, and supply the heated regions with the luxury of perpetual ice. The climate seems to be healthy; and the country, by its boldness, storms, varying temperature, and even by the roughness of the billows which toss for ever on its shore, appears destined for the school of Englishmen and English constitutions.
To the north of Australia, and almost within sight—another vast and lovely region, and another contrast to the great continent—lies New Guinea, fourteen hundred miles long, and two hundred broad. Its appearance from the sea is magnificent—an immense undulation of luxuriance covering the coasts, and rising up the sides of mountain ranges loftier than Mont Blanc. But the tropical excess of vegetation may render it dangerous to European life: at all events, it will be only wisdom to people Australia before we intrude on the naked foresters, and do battle against the more fatal enemy, the swamps of New Guinea.
Borneo, which has so lately become an object of English interest, by the settlement of Sir James Brooke, is also a large and noble island; it has the bold mountain interior, the table-lands, the rivers, and the harbours, which belong to New Guinea. The English settlement, and the presence of British ships, may introduce such imperfect civilisation as the Oriental savage can ever receive; piracy may be partially put down, and even honesty may be partially introduced. But there is this great drawback to the success of English colonisation—that the land is already peopled, and that the strangers are more likely to fall into the indolent habits and luxurious vice of the native, than the native ever to rise to the manly habits of the Englishman.
The Indian Archipelago is almost a new world to the European. Though known to the Dutch soon after the decay of that empire which the Portuguese secured by the discoveries of de Gama, and occasionally touched upon by English commerce, it had been almost forgotten among the stirring scenes in which Europe was involved in the last three centuries. Our conquests in Hindostan, our possession of Ceylon, the capture of the Dutch colonies in the French war, and, later still, our establishment at Singapore, and the opening of China, have turned the eyes of England to those exuberant countries; and we shall now probably reunite them to the world of Europe.
But we must hope that, beyond commerce, and the communication of the comforts and intelligence of English life, our ambition will not extend. Those climates are generally hazardous to European life; they are not less hazardous to the manliness and vigour of English habits, and even to the force of the English character. It has been said that, if the first generation of colonists are English to the grave, the second are Indian from the cradle. They contract the lassitude of the tropics; they become incapable of effort: dissipation is the natural resource of opulent idleness; they linger through life from excess to excess; and, unless a revolution of the hardier native drives them out, or an emigration of their hardier countrymen keeps them in, the colony sinks into the ground.
The new impulse reserved for our century is Colonisation. Always existing, even from the earliest ages of mankind, it had hitherto scarcely deserved the name. The French colonisation of Canada had not advanced, in a century, beyond the nook where they first nestled themselves, and where the most absurd of all policies—that of allowing them to place their language on a footing with the manlier tongue of their conquerors—has perpetuated them as a separate race, with all their absurdities, all their prejudices, and even with all their hostility to the British name. The Spanish colonisation of South America amounted to scarcely more than settling the descendants of the Spanish garrisons, of the Spanish refugees, and of the attendants on the viceroys.
The only true colonists were the English of North America; who, for a hundred years, poured a feeble stream towards the prairies of the Mississippi, recruited and stained by the vagabondage of Europe. But no great impulse of national necessity gave depth and force to the current. But within these two years a more powerful impression has been made by necessity. The Irish famine of 1846, and the following year, drove multitudes to seek for bread on the shores of America. Some hundred thousands probably have left Europe behind for ever, and are now delving and woodcutting in the forests of the western world. A German emigration, though of a more tardy order, has followed, from a pressure, if not of direct famine, yet of difficulty. And within the last year a powerful impulse has been also made in the direction of Australia, of all countries the one which offers the fairest prospect for the Englishman. The success of these emigrations will naturally tend to continue the outpourings of Europe. The emigrants, once settled and successful, will encourage the movement of those whom they have left behind, as much embarrassed as they themselves originally were; and the comforts which come into the possession of industry, in a land of cheap purchase—unburthened with taxes, and unburthened with the still heavier taxes which the vanities of old countries lay on the myriads of middle life—must form a strong temptation, or rather a rational inducement, to seek independence at the antipodes.
But the sudden discovery of the Californian gold-country has given a still more determined urgency to emigration. That a vast territory, which, if we are to rely on the reports of its labourers, is a sheet of gold, should have lain for three hundred years in the hands of the Spaniards, wholly unknown to a people always hungry for gold, is among the wonders which sometimes strike across us in the history of nations. But its immediate effect is, unquestionably, to aid the general tendency. It is already drawing thousands from every part of the world towards California. Columns of men, followed by their trains of oxen and wains of merchandise, are already pouring over every track of the West. In a few years, the desert will probably be filled with population; and when the mines are exhausted, or taken into the possession of the government, the more valuable mine will remain, in the existence of a new nation, in the commerce of the Pacific, and in the richness of a soil unploughed since the Deluge.