Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/93

 to the world within the last three years. We augur well of this Imperial arrangement, not merely because it forms a fitting acknowledgment of colonial enterprise, but because we may venture to see in it the beginning of a new policy, by which the Home Government frees itself, once for all, from the imaginary, or, at any rate, to it, the needless costs and difficulties of founding new colonies. Colonies already established and prosperous may be left to perform this duty, and they may be so left all the more readily when, as in this case, they are prompt to take the duty in hand, with all its outlay and trouble.

We may surely hope that the Imperial Government will not find itself necessitated to repress or prevent the extension of the Colonial Empire. And yet this has been the course for some time past, otherwise Northern Australia would already have been colonized. The contemplated arrangement we have just alluded to respecting that vast but waste colonial domain, will, we trust, for the future, have the effect of putting an end to this repressive system. Difficulties there may be as to new colonies, their land regulations, and the question of their preliminary expenses, but they are real difficulties only to the inexperience and remote position of the Imperial Government. South Australia and Queensland will deal with their respective portions of tropical Australia. In