territories, the commanders in successful campaigns, and a few great officers of the Civil Service-the pivot upon which public business turns in two hemispheres. There never met before or since, at one place, so many men entitled to be called Colonial Statesmen. After the banquet came the usual douche of dreary platitudes. An old lord who had been addressing London audiences for half a century, the Speaker of the House of Commons, an ex-Secretary of State for the Colonies, and a Royal Prince were heard at wearisome length, but of the eminent men for whom the feast was supposed to be spread not one was invited to speak a word. They were permitted to look on while the veterans discoursed learnedly on colonization and colonies, and the work done-by the orators, it might be supposed-in distant regions.

I am not ignorant that there has been a sort of spasmodic reaction of late. The Commissioners for the Indo-Colonial show at Kensington were carried about and exhibited in the provinces like Queen Emma, the King of the Sandwich Islands, and other interesting aborigines, and a conference at the Colonial Office has since done colonists the honour of attempting to wheedle them into accepting the responsibility of empire without any corresponding authority— to make them partners in wars over which they could exercise no more control than over the tides of the Pacific; but any just and adequate recognition of the greatest possessions of the Crown has still to begin. Two or three men in Canada and Australia, considerable enough to throw their shadows across the ocean, have been vaguely heard of, but the working force, the motive power, of colonial life is quite unknown in what they fondly call home.

Colonists bring back from England stories of the amazement of British citizens that colonial boys were not woolly or colonial girls tawny, and even the official class, before the rise of Sir Robert Herbert, knew as little of their distant dominions as Mr. Balfour does of Ireland. A grey-haired ruler, who spent his life in colonies, was fond of telling a story to illustrate the demi-savoir of Downing Street. A certain Secretary of State-so the story rangave audience to an eminent colonist from Australasia, and the conversation fell upon a retired Governor, who, when his period of service had terminated, bought a charming island in the Pacific, and made his home there. He had lost favour at the Colonial Office, and marvellous stories concerning him were current in that locality. "I am told," said the noble Secretary," that Governor So-and-so lives the life of a hermit, in all respects but one. Can it be possible that he has shut himself up on an island, with no other companions than a harem of Wallabies?" "Well, yes," said the Colonist, "that's about it. The island and the wallabies are a true bill; but he has books and music, and ozone to boot." "Pray, sir," said the

Secretary, in a tone of horror, " how many Wallabies may there be there?" "How many? Well, I never thought of asking. A good few, no doubt; a hundred for certain, or five hundred for anything I know. I dare say he doesn't know how many himself." "Gracious Providence," cried the statesman, in grave surprise, "what an example to a Christian people!" "Oh, as for example, I wish all your Governors employed themselves as innocently." "I am profoundly grieved to hear you say so, sir! Morality must be at a low ebb indeed when a man like you makes light of such a proceeding." "Morality!" exclaimed the colonist; "what does your lordship suppose a wallaby to be?" Why, a half-caste, of course." wallaby, my lord, is a dwarf kangaroo !"

"A

The chief sufferers by this official insouciance, after all, are not the colonies, but the empire. Of all history answering the description of "philosophy teaching by example," the most pregnant in lessons for our instruction at home is the history being transacted in colonies by men of our own race, under our eyes if we choose to open them a little. We are engaged at present on a new experiment of working a constitution of checks and balances with an overwhelming democratic franchise the same experiment has been made by the same races and classes which inhabit these islands-minus the patricians; they had to encounter surprises and dangers which will inevitably arise here—they have rehearsed, in fact, the drama to be presently performed on this greater stage, and no one turns for example or warning to that experiment. Yet we have learnt something from them already, half unconsciously indeed. The systematic registration of real estate, the abolition of a property qualification for members of Parliament, the establishment of the ballot, a wide popular suffrage, and electoral districts of nearly equal population are among the reforms in which colonies anticipated by many years the mother country. And there are other reforms, like payment by the State of all the cost of elections (from making the roll to the return of the writ), as well as Parliaments of a shorter duration, the reasonable compensation for the expenses incurred in attendance at Westminster, and the wisely Conservative practice which gives votes to ratepayers in shires in reasonable proportion to their responsibility to taxation, in which I do not doubt the mother country must follow their example, nolens volens.

The political history of new communities is one that might reconcile us to learn something from them without humiliation; it is a record of surprising vigour, originality, and courage. Take Victoria as a conspicuous example. When England had come into the enjoyment of her first Reform Act, and the democracy were clamouring for something more in the shape of the People's Charter, the foot of a civilized man had never been set on that territory. How it has since grown into the best endowed and most distinguished offspring of the

old land is a story worth knowing, if any history is to teach us any moral. Let us take a rapid glance at it.

The primitive history of Australia, like the foundation of Rome, is a tale of adventurous and intrepid buccaneering. Its Romulus and Remus were nurtured at the dugs of Convictism, a fiercer wolf thau the alma mater of the Tiber. The wide territory known in early times as Botany Bay, now the home of a powerful and gallant community, which has the glory of having been first among colonies to aid the mother country in an emergency, was occupied in the beginning exclusively by prisoners of the Crown and their appointed warders. The Irish insurgents of 1798, and the peasants who conspired at a later date against an intolerable land system, formed a notable element in the population-convicts without a moral stain festering among the refuse of great cities.

Port Philip, one of its outlying settlements, which in the end outran the mother colony in wealth, population, and public spirit, and is now recognized as a powerful State wherever civilized men exist, had for its founder the son of a convict who himself suffered the lash and manacles for violation of the criminal code. These, it must be confessed before the scoffer, are the vulgar incidents of a costermonger history, but when the noble river which runs for a thousand miles between rival colonies is crowned by the spires and towers and factory chimneys of a great metropolis, and the Dominion or Republic of which it is the capital no more blushes for its origin than the Eternal City, the story of its genesis and growth painted by some competent hand will rival in interest the tale told by Livy.

But, meantime, explorers must collect the essential materials for the future epic history, and the present writer is content, for his part, to set up a rude finger-post designed to indicate the direction and current of events from the beginning. At the opening of this century ships from England, commissioned to circumnavigate and explore the new continent in the Pacific, discovered on its southern rim a noble land-locked harbour, forty miles in depth, fenced from the ocean by a circle of cliffs and shelving hills, with but one inlet to waters so spacious and tranquil that the navies of the world might ride there in safety. When this news reached London, the Government of the day despatched a cargo of convicts and soldiers to take possession of the unknown country; for the spirit of maritime adventure which had carried Raleigh and Cook to such fruitful triumphs had long burned very low. Captain Collins, the commander of the expedition, entered the Bay, and pitched his tents on a sandbank, thinly covered with a rough herbage. Collins was a gaoler, not a colonizer. After a hasty inspection of the district, he pronounced it "an unpromising and unproductive country," deficient in water and unsuitable for settlement. The district is now familiar ground;

within a mile of the site of his camp there are tracts of volcanic soil of singular fertility resting on a subsoil of limestone, and abundantly supplied with wholesome water; and the country pronounced unfit for settlement is occupied by the pleasant gardens and villas of a fashionable watering place. The land-locked harbour which he barely entered, and made no attempt to explore, was itself but the gateway to regions of rare productiveness and beauty, and to other regions rich in the precious metal as the Eldorado of the Spanish adventurers. After loitering for over three months at the mouth of the harbour he sailed away to the neighbouring island of Van Diemen's Land, and happily saved the future Victoria from the discredit of becoming a penal settlement, and the disaster of being "sown with rotten seed.”

For nearly a generation the territory lay vacant, though Government surveyors from Botany Bay had in the meantime penetrated it from the North and given such a favourable account of its resources that the Governor of that settlement would have attempted to occupy it as an offshoot of Sydney but for peremptory orders from the Colonial Office to desist. The surveyor's report, however, glowing with the enthusiasm of a discoverer, was published, and produced fruit of a wholesomer sort than grows in official hot-houses. In the little island to which Captain Collins had carried his convicts twenty years before then called Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania-an expedition was projected by private enterprise to inspect the "new and happy land." But in a settlement ruled by military authority, and consisting of convicts and their keepers, the impediments to individual action were as great as in the realms of the Czar or the Sultan; and it was only after years of delay, and when several official persons were propitiated into taking some pecuniary interest in the project, that a company was at length permitted to come into existence. When it was fairly launched, a rival project immediately followed, according to the habit of the enterprising competitive Northern races; and early in the year 1835 two sets of adventurous colonists were preparing to sail from Hobart Town, the principal port of Van Diemen's Land, to explore the shores of Port Philip. The destined commander of the first expedition was John Batman, originally a blacksmith, but who had raised himself by energy and courage to a certain prosperity and distinction. He is described as a man of remarkable endowments: "Tall and well proportioned, and of prodigious strength, inexhaustible energy, and indomitable will." This young giant had distinguished himself in capturing bushrangers, had made himself familiar with the habits of the aborigines, and, what perhaps furthered his ambition no less than these services, had skill to find favour with the Governor. Little more than fifty years ago, on the 12th of May, 1835, he sailed from Launceston in a little vessel of thirty tons, accompanied by a party

of three white men and seven black fellows, and after beating about for seventeen days in the narrow straits, which are now crossed with as much punctuality as a ferry on the Mersey, landed on a promontory within Port Philip harbour. With characteristic energy he opened immediate communication with the natives through his black fellows, and in a few days concluded a contract with certain chiefs of the local tribe for the purchase of the tract of country lying between the Yarra and the Barwon. By an instrument formally executed under seal, the chiefs Jagajaga, Bungaree, Cooloolock, Yanyan, Monmarmaler, and others did duly give, grant, enfeoff, and confirm the possession of this district to him and his heirs for ever; having received therefor a valuable consideration, to wit, certain tomahawks, blankets, looking-glasses, beads, and pocket-handkerchiefs, liberally computed as of the value of £200. The district exchanged for these treasures now comprises the capital of the colony, the cities of Geelong and Collingwood, the ports of Sandridge and St. Kilda, wide stretches of agricultural land studded with homesteads and vineyards, and a suburban settlement, where one may ride from sunrise to sunset among the villas and cottages of a wealthy and cultured class.

The second expedition sailed three months after the first. It was under the command of John Pascoe Fawkner, though so vulgar an impediment as sea-sickness compelled him to confide the control, in the first instance, to one of his associates. Fawkner, like his rival, had been an artisan, but, by energy and intelligence and the happy fortune of new countries, had gradually risen to other and more liberal pursuits, and had latterly become an agent and spokesman for the convicts, though for certain illegitimate proceedings he had fallen under the ban of the authorities. The new-comers, as soon as they approached the shore, were warned by Batman not to become trespassers upon "his purchased territory;" but they were little disposed to admit his claims or submit to his authority. Finally both expeditions moved up the bay and crept along the river Yarra to a swampy valley, little more than a mile from the coast, lying between four low shelving hills, where the strange birds and wild animals of the country then found shelter, but where now stands the splendid city of Melbourne. An angry contest over their respective rights ensued, and was not speedily composed. But, in the end, a country as large as Britain was found to be capacious enough for both parties, numbering little over a dozen, and they agreed to tolerate each other. They faced cheerfully the privations of such an enterprise-beds of opossum skins or blankets spread under a tree and canopied by the skies, rations of tough mutton and dough baked in the ashes, and sometimes in insufficient quantity, but seasoned and made digestible by visions of splendid prosperity to come. In a little time they settled down to fixed pursuits-Batman and some of his associates to feed