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at the trouble of examining the voluminous details from which results must be derived. It is therefore hoped that a condensed statement, combining statistical information with personal observation, may prove both useful and agreeable at the present time, when so many of every class in this kingdom are seeking, in all quarters of the world, for what they find with difficulty at home. It has been urged by some, that a sufficiently inviting view of Australia is not to be found in this book; that from its description they never would be induced to emigrate. What they may have expected, the author does not know. His sole wish has been to give a fair statement of facts, and he believes that if this work possesses any merit, it is because of its truth.

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The reader will judge how far the following eloquent passage from the Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords has been justified. Since the presentation of this Report, July 23, 1847, the progress of the colonies has much increased.

"But the evidence which they have taken, both as shewing the rapid development of the resources of British North America, and more especially as proving the unexampled progress of the newly-planted Australian provinces, is well calculated to warrant a hope that the great principle of Colonization, so often treated of as among those ancient, primitive, and heroical works' for which modern times are unfitted, not only has been realised in some British possessions, but has been exemplified on a greater scale, and with more entire success there, and of late years, than has been manifested elsewhere in the past history of mankind. To transplant our domestic habits, our commercial enterprise,

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our laws, our institutions, our language, our literature, and our sense of religious obligations, to the more distant regions of the globe, is an enterprise worthy of the character of a great maritime nation. It is not only in its progress the pursuit and attainment of glory, but in its success is the performance of a high duty and the accomplishment of a noble destiny; and if it can also be made subservient to the relief of pressing distress at home, if the labour which is in excess in certain parts of the country can be rendered the source of an extending and durable prosperity in the colonies, such a combination of advantages cannot fail the more to recommend this great question of Colonization to the earliest attention of the Legislature."-LORD MONTEAGLE-Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords, July 23, 1847.

VICTORIA,

FORMERLY CALLED PORT PHILLIP.

"GIVE me ships, colonies, and commerce,' exclaimed Napoleon, jealous of the naval supremacy of Great Britain. 'Buonaparte knew nothing about it,' observed the shrewd Clockmaker of Slickville; he should have said, Give me colonies, for then he would have had both ships and commerce.'

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The counting-house politicians of the present day, with their Debtor and Creditor view of the value of our colonial possessions, urge us to cast off all such of them as leave no balance in the ledger; forgetful of all the considerations so ably enforced by Lord John Russell, in his speech on the Australian Colonies Constitution Bill, of their importance to our commerce in peace, to our power in war, of our duty to our fellowsubjects who have emigrated, to the native population whom we have subjected to our control, and of the effect which would result; not

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of constituting our colonies independent communities, for which they are as yet unripe and unfit, but of forcing them to seek the protection of rival nations.

We propose in the following pages to give our views as to the rise, progress, and value of the Australian colonies; to shew the advantages which may accrue to Great Britain from a judicious system of colonization; and to point out what we consider to be her bounden duty in availing herself of the commanding position in which Divine Providence has placed her.

In the course of this work we shall describe the present state of the colony, and the pursuits of the settlers; we shall take occasion to suggest what description of persons should seek a settlement in these colonies; to point out the errors which mislead the efforts of philanthropists in the mother country; to urge the just claims of the colonists regarding the population poured out upon their shores; and to suggest more adequate means for the supply of that population.

Having a territory of boundless extent, capable of producing every export to be found in the world; a soil of every quality, from exuberant richness to the most arid sterility; a sky

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