Such is a true picture, we conceive, of the position in which we stand in relation to our Australian colonies. Meanwhile, the colonists are loyal, affectionate, and devoted, and (the result of absence and distance) with really warmer feelings toward the mother country than those they left behind them. It will be the part of wisdom on our side to keep them in this temper. They demand nothing that is unreasonable—nothing that it is not equally for their advantage and ours that we should promptly and freely concede. They ask for responsible government, and doing so they ask for no more than what is possessed by their fellow-citizens. They ought to have perfect power over their own resources and their own expenditure; but, in justice and fairness, they ought also to defray their own military charges; and, seeing they have neither within nor without any enemy that can cope with a company of light infantry, the cost ought not to be oppressive to them.
The Australian colonies are, at present, governed in a fashion to produce discontent and recalcitration. They are, consequently, both troublesome and expensive. The nation absolutely gains nothing by them that it would not gain, and even in a higher degree, were they self-governed, or, for that matter, were they even independent. Thus, emigration to them would go on at least in the same degree as it does now. It does so go on, to the self-governed colony of Canada, and to the country which was once colonies, and this after a virtual separation of three quarters of a century.
In like manner will our commercial intercourse with the Australian colonies proceed under self-government. In 1828, the whole exports of Australia amounted only to the paltry sum of £181,000, and in 1845, the last for which there is a return, they had come to £2,187,633, or in seventeen years' time, had been increased by above fourteen-fold, a rapidity of progress to which there is no parallel. At this ratio, of course, they can not be expected to proceed in future; for the Australians, having coal, iron, and wool in abundance, will soon learn to make coarse fabrics for themselves. The finer they will long receive from us, as America, after its long separation, still does. But that the Australian Colonies, under any circumstances, are destined to become one of the greatest marts of British commerce, may be considered as a matter of certainty. The only good market in the world, for the wool, the tallow, the train oil, and the copper ore of Australia, is England; and to England they must come, even if Australia were independent to-morrow; and they must be paid for, too, in British manufactures. Independence has never kept the tobacco of America from finding its best market in England, nor has it prevented American cotton from becoming the greatest of the raw materials imported by England.
A common lineage, a common language, common manners, customs, laws, and institutions, bind us and our Australian brethren together, and will continue to do so, perhaps longer than the British Constitution itself will last. They form, in fact, a permanent bond of union; whereas the influence of patronage, and the trickeries of Conservative legislation, do but provoke and hasten the separation which they are foolishly framed to prevent.
[From the Dublin University Magazine.]
JEWISH VENERATION.
The veneration of the Jew for the law is displayed by the grossest superstition, a copy of the Torah or Decalogue being carefully soldered into a narrow tin case, and hung over the entrance to their chambers, as old crones with us nail a horse-shoe to a door; it is even believed to avail as an amulet or charm capable of averting evil, or curing the most obstinate disease. "Ah," said a bed-ridden old Hebrew woman to me, as I visited the mission hospital in Jerusalem, "what can the doctors do for me? If I could only touch the Torah I should be made whole." Not exactly comprehending what she meant, I handed her a little tin-cased copy of the Ten Commandments; she grasped it in her emaciated hands, which trembled with anxiety, and her eyes were lit up with a transient gleam of joy. "Are you made whole?" I inquired; she made no answer, fell back on her pillow, let drop the Torah, and turned from me with a sigh.
Sitting one evening with an intelligent German Jew, who used often to pay me a visit at my lodgings, the conversation turned on Jewish religious rites and ceremonies. Alluding to the day of atonement, he assured me that on that day the Jews believe that ministers are appointed in heaven for the ensuing year: a minister over angels; one over the stars; one over earth; the winds, trees, plants, birds, beasts, fishes, men, and so forth.
That, on that day also, the good and evil deeds of every son of Abraham are actually summed up, and the balance struck for or against each, individually. Where the evil deeds preponderate, such individuals are brought in as in debt to the law; and ten days after the day of atonement, summonses are issued to call the defaulters before God. When these are served, the party summoned to appear is visited either with sudden death or a rapid and violent disease which must terminate speedily in death. "But can not the divine wrath be appeased?" said I. "Not appeased," said my informant; "the decree must be evaded." "How so?" "Thus," he replied. "When a Jew is struck with sudden sickness about this time, if he apprehends that his call is come, he sends immediately for twelve elders of his people; they demand his name; he tells them, for example, my name is Isaac; they answer, thy name shall no more be Isaac, but Jacob shall thy name be called. Then kneeling round the sick roan, they pray for him in these words: O God, thy servant, Isaac, has not good deeds to exceed the evil, and a summons against him has gone forth; but this pious man before thee, is named Jacob, and not Isaac. There is a flaw in the indictment; the name in the angel's summons is not correct, therefore, thy servant Jacob can not be called on to appear." "After all," said I, "suppose this Jacob dies." "Then," replied my companion, "the Almighty is unjust; the summons was irregular, and its execution not according to law."