Copy 1, Volume 1
Three expeditions into the interior of Eastern Australia, with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix, and of the present colony of New South Wales / By Major T. L. Mitchell.
- Thomas Mitchell
- Date:
- 1839
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Three expeditions into the interior of Eastern Australia, with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix, and of the present colony of New South Wales / By Major T. L. Mitchell. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. “ But of all tlie colonies of England, the most singular and the most suc¬ cessful is the Colony established in New South Wales.—Formed by none of the impulses which had hitherto urged men to take the chances of the wilder¬ ness ; formed at the greatest distance from home ever attempted by civilization —in fact, the greatest possible distance, the Antipodes; formed of the most intractable materials,—the colony of Australia, within half the life of man, has risen to a pitch of commerce, agricultural opulence, and population, never be¬ fore equalled in the most fortunate or costly settlements of national fortune and enterprise. Why is this? May we not naturally ask, why has the new Continent, given exclusively into the hands of England, exhibited the extra¬ ordinary spectacle of a new shape of dominion? “ Raised out of the refuse and rejected material of the mother country — whatever may have been tlie purpose, the result is clear, that a great experi¬ ment in the faculty of renovation in the human character has found its field in the solitudes of this vast continent; that the experiment has succeeded to a most unexampled and unexpected degree ; and that the question is now finally decided between severity and discipline. If this were the intent of Provi¬ dence, in making over to England the inheritance of New South Wales, it would be only one of the crowd of instances which display the unwearied watchfulness of Heaven for the welfare of man. When the time shall arrive in which the philosopher shall be able to regard the results, free from the detail which now diminishes their real grandeur ; when half a century more shall show him the noble proportions of a new Empire ruling the Southern Ocean, filled with the free spirit and strong energies of Britain—covering the waters so long lifeless with her commerce—acting like a new minister of life, along those boundless and most fertile shores, which spread from India to Japan—shooting the moral electricity in shocks that only reanimate, and sparks that only enlighten, through the whole stagnant and fettered, yet most lovely zone of the East,—then first shall he be able to comprehend either the nobleness of the task achieved, or the beneficence of that Power which, controlling all things, gave to our remote island the duty, the means, and the honour of this great triumph of good over evil. We admit tliat all has not yet been completed, that there are many things in the execution to excite the displeasure of the fastidious, and not a few to puzzle the sagacity of the sapient. We expect that those who pride themselves on the exclusive possession of philosophy, will be indignant. We admit, also, that the manners of coiivicts and their attendant turnkeys can have but little of the picturesque, and less of the sentimental. But the main fact is unquestionable, that out of those convicts has been formed a powerful, active, and opulent community. hat could have been done at home with the multitude who have been, in succession, transported to Australia, if they had remained in England? Pos¬ sibly, not one in fifty would have ever thought of anything but picking pockets or robbing on the highway ; one half of them would have perished in prison, or of fainine and disease, in their own hovels ; one quarter at least would have been hanged. But, by the fortunate, we might almost say, the mira¬ culous, expedient of ])roviding them with a country, where they might begin the world anew, where they might live witliout the stigma of their former life, and recommence their character—where, being saved from the desperate difficulties of providing themselves with food, they might feel some human enjoyment in the beauties of nature ; being protected from disgrace for the past, tliey might exert themselves to provide a character for the future ; and, being placed in the hope of possessing property and providing for their ofi- spring, they might become alike industrious and domestic, decent and happy, or in some rarer iiistances, opulent and honourable,—the greatest example of rapid colonial prosperity in human records has been exhibited to the eyes of mankind. * *. *. ^ * *. » Tlie kind of “ gentlemen who sit at home at ease,’' surrounded hy the labours of water companies, and companies of all kinds, and having light, watching, and cool streets at command, on the simple terms of paying a few shillings, yet are peevish at the state of society, and praise the times ‘ \l’lien wild in woods the noble savage ran,’— ought to make a voyage to New South Wales, and a summer’s journey through it, with the sun in'the vertex, if it w'ere only for the purpose of reconciling](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2933567x_0001_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
