Queensland as a separate colony was not yet in existence, though Brisbane had been begun; tropical Australia was wholly unsettled; Western Australia was, what it still is, a poor and thinly settled country.
The map of New Zealand—it was not important enough to have a map all to itself—shows the coast-line imperfectly surveyed, and not a single town or English settlement upon it! Fifty years ago that great colony was not yet even founded. The first serious settlement was made in 1839, when a patch of land at Port Nicholson, in Cook Strait, was bought from the natives for the first party of settlers sent out by the recently established New Zealand Company.
In North America the whole of the North-West Territory, including Manitoba, Muskoka, British Columbia, and Vancouver’s Island, was left to Indians, trappers, buffaloes, bears, and rattlesnakes. South Africa shows the Cape Colony and nothing else. Natal, Orange Free State, the Transvaal, Bechuanaland, Griqualand, Zululand are all part of the great undiscovered continent. Considering that all these lands have now been opened up and settled, so that where was formerly a hundred square miles of forest and prairie there is now the same area covered with plantations, towns, and farms, it will be understood that the British Empire has been increased not only in area, but in wealth, strength, and resources to an extent which would have been considered incredible fifty years ago. It is, in fact, just the difference between owning a barren heath and owning a cultivated farm. The British Empire in 1837 contained millions of square miles of barren heath and wild forest, which are now settled land and smiling plantations. It boasted of vast countries, with hardly a single European in them, which are now filled with English towns. In 1837, prophets foretold the speedy downfall of an Empire which could no longer defend her vast territories. These territories can now defend themselves. It may be that we shall have to fight for empire, but the longer the day of battle is put off the better it will be for England, and the greater will be her might. To carry on that war, there are now, scattered over the whole of the British Empire, fifty millions of people speaking the Anglo-Saxon tongue. In fifty years’ time there will be two hundred millions in Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, Africa, Asia, New Zealand, and the Isles, with another two hundred millions in the States. If the English-speaking races should decide to unite in a vast confederacy, all the other Powers on the earth combined will not be able to do them an injury. Perhaps after this life we shall be allowed to see what goes on in the world. If so, there is joy in store for the Briton; if not, we have been born too soon.
NAPOLEON AT LONGWOOD
(From a Drawing made in 1820)
Next to the extension and development of the Empire comes the opening up of new countries. We have rescued since the year 1837 the third part of Africa from darkness; we have found the sources of the Nile; we have traced the great River Congo from its source to its mouth; we have explored the whole of Southern Africa; we have rediscovered the great African lakes which were known to the Jesuits in the seventeenth century; in Australia we have crossed and recrossed the continent; the whole of North America has been torn from the Red Indians, and is now settled in almost every part.
LONDON STREET CHARACTERS, 1837
(From a Drawing by John Leech)