Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/86

 shameless profligacy. Imagine the case of a household most carefully made up of picked specimens from all the idle, mischievous, and notoriously bad characters in the country! Surely the man who should he mad or wicked enough to bring together this monstrous family, and to keep up its numbers and character by continual fresh supplies, would be scouted from the society he so outraged—would be denounced as the author of a diabolical nuisance to his neighbours and his country, would be proclaimed infamous for setting at nought all morality and decency. What is it better, that, instead of a household, it is a whole people we have so brought together, and are so keeping up?—that it is the wide society of the whole world, and not of a single country, against which the nuisance is committed?” After explaining his views as to the remedies to be applied, the writer adds—“But these measures, if carried into effect at all, must be taken in hand soon. Time—no distant time, perhaps—may place this ‘foul disnatured’ progeny of ours out of our power for good or for harm. Let us count the years that have passed since we first scattered emigrants along the coast of America. It is but as yesterday—and look at the gigantic people that has arisen. Thank Heaven! that in morals and in civilization they are at this day what they are. But can we look forward without a shudder at the appalling spectacle which a few generations hence may be doomed to witness in Australia? Pass by as many years to come as it has taken the United States of America to attain to their present maturity, and here will be another new world with another new people, stretching out its population unchecked; rapid in its increase of wealth, and art, and power; taking its place in the congress of the mightiest nations; rivalling, perhaps ruling them; and then think what stuff this people