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HO The Leader andSaturday Analyst, [Feb....
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THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES. I T must have b...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The £ S, D. Of The Fo11eign Office. Fpwo...
every part of which is equally necessary to her welfare .. arid . " her greatness . That the Foreign-office should allow Mr . Lowther so to instruct the Parliament and the people , is as extraordinary as the industry which neither he nor the Foreignoffice comprehends is wonderful . Like other politicians , he and they form their estimate of trade sfroin their interference with it ; and as the internal trade of England lias happily been thought beneath their notice—to which we owe its extent and healthfulness — it seems to them , better acquainted with intermeddling abroad than with the growth of freedom at home , to be secondary and unimportant . Our Government has allowed our trade , as it has allowed our press , to grow tmlicensed into greatness and Utility , and both are now the foremost promoters of civilization .
Then , , the Foreign-office , per Mr . Lowthek , informs the Parliament that "the quantities of merino wool brought to the two principal fairs of Kharkoff and Poltawa , in 1858 , were computed to amount to 550 , 000 , 000 poods . The whole production of merino wool ( in Russia ) may be taken at 800 , 000 , 000 poods , and of * common wool three or four times that amount . " He therefore represents the production of common wool in Russia to be at least 2 , 400 ^ 000 , 000 poods . A pood is 36 lbs ., ana _ therefore , according to Mr . Lowthek , Russian merino wool is produced to ' the extraordinary amount of 28 , 800 , 000 , 000 lbs ., and
coininon wool to the still more extraordinary amount of 86 , 400 , 000 , 000 lbs . The more moderate estimate of Tego-BOitsKr is 137 , 500 5 000 lbs . for the total growth of wool of all kinds in European . Russia , which contains eleven-twelfths of all the population of the Empire . This estimate includes all the . merino wool produced . Vast . ' as may be the flocks- of 5 , 000 , 000 people in Asiatic Russia , the y , will hardly supply 86 , 262 , 500 , 000 lbs ., to make uj ) the amount stated by Mr . Lowtiiek . We profess our utter inability to guess at what he means , or at the snnrrp . of his mistake . We leave the riddle , therefore , to
be solved by the Foreign-office , when it has learned that the internal trade of England is of more than secondary importance . In another article we have made some use of the information in these reports ; but we could not , like our contemporaries , pass over these blunders without cautioning the public against them . The Secretaries of Legation who have made these reports ; the Foreign-office , which has published themlinearrected . ; the printer , who has allowed errors of facts and language to pass which would ensure the . dismission of ""the reader " from the office of any morning paper , put to press far in the night in breathless haste , are all to blame . Who is most to
blame we cannot tell , but the present Foreign Minister is the man -whom the Parliament should call to account . Let him divide the blame amongst his predecessors , his subordinates , and the printer he employs . To find , fault with administrators has , however , lately gone out of fashion . We have had competitive examinations established to secure perfect service , and any shortcomings in Ministers are , by their patrons in the " press , contrasted with faults-and errors in the mercantile - community , and because it is sullied , for them is claimed the brilliancy of eminent virtue ; But while no member of that community which now issues in the shape of circulars multitudinous reports , full of valuable information , could make
such gross blunders as those we have pointed out , it makes no pretenco to teach and guide the nation , and derives neither power nor emolument for pretending to perform such an important duty . The standard . ! , ' therefore , by which theso classes are to be tried is very different ; and errors , mistakes , and even frauds detected amongst merchants , is no sort of excuse for similar faults in a class which only deserves the pre-eminence it claims by being exempt from them . An avpvml disregard of niceties , such as Lord Malmesbuiu has for grammar , as too mean for great -functions , would seem to bo the rul « s of the Foreign-office . It is , however , an' old stovy that , don't cure in trifles followed out , bringa on disgrace , and may end in ruin .
Tlio facts quoted are only specimens of what occurs throughout our administration . For months , and even yonrs , the nation has been fiwtted by apprehensions arising from a want of seamen ; and it is not possible to rend Lord Dundonald's Memoirs , without attaining a deep and profound conviction that the whble evil arises from the continued misconduct of our ignorant , conceitedly obstinate and arrogant Admiralty . 'J 5 y the Foreign department ( some of the errors of which we have exposed )
poor Africans is to . them . They liaye never had proofs that it is useless and wrong ; we continue a worship often demonstrated to be false .
the nation is continually involved in difficulties with 1 ' oreigu countries , and not unfrequently in wars that no reasoning can justify , or even defend , by any prinoiplo that we respect . Against ignorance , mistakes , nud cupidity in individuals wo are always and enough on our guard ; for Foreign- 'Oflicos and Adnuralties we have a traditional rovcrenco , which , oftor numberless examples of depknrablo errors and misconduct in them , is now more disgraceful to us than the derided fetiche worship of the
Ho The Leader Andsaturday Analyst, [Feb....
HO The Leader andSaturday Analyst , [ Feb . 4 , I 860 ,
The Australian Colonies. I T Must Have B...
THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES . I T must have been a severe blow to the pr ide of every patriotic Englishman , however vehement his own outcry for an abandonment of all fratricidal strife , when George the Third at last recognised the independence of his rebellious American provinces . The beating and baffling sustained in the struggle , the useless sacrifice of so many millions of pounds sterling and thousands of human lives , must have been mortifying enough to all ; but to those who piqued themselves upon their superior knowledge of statecraft the loss must have appeared almost irreparable . Those were days in which the ingeniously absurd economical system , which still finds so blind an acceptance on the continent of Europe , was received and adopted in England as infallible . Dr . Adam Smith had ,
indeed , commenced his vigorous assault upon it , but his theories were assented to only by a few uninfl uential persons , and were as yet pooh-poohed by men in authority . In that system colonies had a great place . Not for any of the reasons which now lead us to desire outlets for the energy and industry of our people , but for the advantages which the mother country could , as it was supposed , contrive to get out of the colonists . A colony was considered an outlying estate , from which a large profit miglit be made- —a market for the inanufactures of the ' . mother country , and the means of supplying it at its own price with commodities " which it might sell to the rest of the world for whatever it pleased to ask . So the colonies were carefully shut out from intercourse with all other
parts of the world , and specially taken care of as milch cows to be drained by England . / What * then , must have been the apprehensions of sagacious politicians at this loss of the best aivl richest plantations England possessed ? We may be sure they thought her -commerce in danger of almost total / extinction . Little could they anticipate that the trade of England with these rebellious dependencies would exceed , in less than seventy years , the whole trade she had carried on with the world at the- most flourishing period known to them ; and if any one had predicted such a result they would have set him down as a harebrained enthusiast . Some consolation , however , they might haye : found
in the discovery of that vast Australian continent , upon which , some five or six years later , a settlement was to be made . Small consolation ; for no one . could have anticipated that a possession which , in 1788 , was only deemed good enough for a convict ; establishment , would , even in the lifetime of the young men of that day , possess a population as great as that of the lost province ' s , and promise a development of wealth and power upon a scale never before attained by any people . Yet such is the promise our Australian colonies now give . Settled only in 17 SS —if a convict establishment can be called a settlement—long treated as receptacles for the dregs of English criminality ,
separated by the immense distance from the observation and attention of the public , neglected and discouraged by the ( Joverninent , they have sprung , in the course of some ten years , mainly through the influence of that potent magnet , gold , to a marvellous rank and prosperity . If gold , however , has given them their great , start , their future does not depend upon their ability to continue supplying it . Their rich plains require only labour to produce an abundance of commodities , for which a demand will exist as long as mankind requires food and clothing . The supply of that labour may now-be considered assured , nud with it the prosperity of these colonies .
With all its present wealth and prospect of more , Australia , however , shows no sigi ) 3 ofany desire to break oft'its counexion with the old country . Fat and lusty as it has waxed , it has not put forth claims to bo ' allowed to stand by itself . Jt does not want to celebrate a Fourth of July with screaming orations against the tyranny of Great Britain , and ranting apostrophes to its own greatness . The colonists arc content with an anniversary of a very different , character . They celebrate the 26 th of January , tlio day upori which England planted its first sorry settlement on that great continent . An exceedingly unpretending anniversary ,, dignified by no pretentious declaration oi rights borrowed from
Roussrau , and practically denying , like that great apostle of ltyench liberty , the rights of all persons , weak or foolish enough to bo slaves , but one which will every year grow in interest and importance , and by its celebration prove a pledge of firm alliance between the watre palohrd and her someday yet distant , however ,. JUiapulohrior . Why is this P Englishmen are just as iiulopondent mid . free now as eighty years ago . ' Thrown upon a distant lamb they ore as jealous of their rights and liberties as we ' ro ever the-Puritans or their descendants . The answer is not hard to find ,, and it is one for which the present age , so much abused to the ? advantage of its predecessors , may tako some small credit . We have left the Australians no cause to desire th & x indopen *
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 4, 1860, page 10, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_04021860/page/10/
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