Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/123

 friends; some of their immediate dependants also—of those between themselves and the lowest class; and were encouraged in various ways to do so. The lowest class again followed with alacrity, because they found themselves moving with, and not away from, the state of society in which they had been living. It was the same social and political union under which they had been born and bred; and to prevent any contrary impression being made, the utmost solemnity was observed in transferring the rites of Pagan superstition. They carried with them their gods—their festivals—their games; all, in short, that held together, and kept entire the fabric of society as it existed in the parent state. Nothing was left behind that could be moved,—of all that the heart or eye of an exile misses. The new colony was made to appear as if time or chance had reduced the whole community to smaller dimensions, leaving it still essentially the same home and country to its surviving members. It consisted of a general contribution of members from all classes, and so became, on its first settlement, a mature state, with all the component parts of that which sent it forth. It was a transfer of population, therefore, which gave rise to no sense of degradation, as if the colonist were thrust out from a higher to a lower description of community.”—pp. 190–2.

The foregoing writer not only contrasts this with all that happens in a modern colony, but particularly traces its results in the United States of America, where, he says, whatever admixture they had of the higher ranks of the British community, “the advantage, such as it was, was accidental,” and formed “no part of the legislative project.” He adds,—“our later colonists have not had even this security and ill-administered aid;” and, after remarking that “honour, rank, and power, are less ruinous bribes than