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 CHAPTER XXVII.

CONCLUSION.

N the preceding pages we have followed step by step the series of social, commercial, and political events which have established three free and prosperous colonies on the island-continent of Australia; the progress of the pastoral interest from the eight merinos imported by M'Arthur to the fourteen millions of fine-woolled sheep which now graze over Australian pastures; the progress of emigration, from the few score officials, soldiers, turnkeys, and rum-traders, who, for a quarter of a century, formed the only free additions to the native-born population, to the present time, when armies of emigrants, counted in tens of thousands, arrive from all countries of Europe and America; the progress of the value of land from the period when a bribe of rations and the aid of government-fed slave labour was needed to induce a colonist to accept a farm, to the present year, when land is sold by the foot at the rate of thousands of pounds per acre; the progress of trade from the mere barter of the year 1800, with imports dependent on the expenditure of the home government, to the year 1853, when millions of Australian exports in gold and wool create a new and profitable export for almost every branch of British manufactures, and afford employment for an amount of tonnage which British shipowners find themselves unable to supply; the progress of political institutions, from the irresponsible despotism of the first governor and gaoler, to the concession of the amplest powers of self-government and taxation, with full control of land and land funds, customs and casual revenues, to the three Legislative Assemblies of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, by the Conservative Duke of Newcastle.

These rapid strides of the English-speaking Australian colonists, in which the acquisition of political rights has kept pace with the enlargement of their material resources, we have endeavoured to trace with a firm and impartial pen. We conclude our task at a moment when the brightest prospects seem opening to the three colonies; when, released from the baneful control of transmarine bureaucracy, permitted to exercise with the most perfect freedom those rights of self-government which are so essential to the full development of the powers of an English race; relieved from the contamination of old world felonry;