Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/12

 to plant the other, and the fields have answered to her tilth. The greatest of modern English Statesmen strove to remedy the defect in North America, but apathy and obstruction among those who lacked his prophetic vision palsied his attempt, and a deadly struggle with a continent armed under Napoleon consumed the energies both of his country and of Pitt. Wentworth essayed to confer upon his countrymen a constitution framed as closely as practicable in conformity with that of England, but he found admirers only, and not supporters, of his attempt ta fix in the social and political fabric the principle which, by distinction of the worthiest, stirs generation after generation to maintain the honour of their families, and the glory of their native land. The soul of goodness in ancient English institutions may be thanked for the fact that even when maimed they render useful service. If there were no Providence to shape their ends men might despair of the results of their hewing.

What those results have been in Australia must ever be deeply interesting, not only to the colonists but to their kindred in the parent land. The administration of the Crown domains, and the development of forms of government in different colonies, are engrossing subjects of inquiry, and their phases still undergoing change (subject to the unconquerable conditions of nature), have compelled me to trace them to more recent times than I contemplated when I took up my pen, and hoped to pause at the era in which local was substituted for Imperial control. But it was impossible to record the events of 1856 without allusions to living persons, and it then became idle to shrink from depicting more recent times in which vital problems have been variously dealt with in different places. The hand