Reflections on the rise of Australia. 3 



universal carriers of the commerce of the globe, while the 

 English language has been adopted as the medium of intercom- 

 munication of all seafarers. 



Australia, or New Holland,* as it was originally termed by 

 its first discoverers, proud of their nationality, furnishes of 

 all the British colonies the most conspicuous and instructive 

 example of this policy. England has not merely thrown 

 open this immense continent to European civilization, peopled 

 it with hundreds of thousands of her sons, and created a new 

 market for herself and all navigating nations, — she has also in 

 this colony fimiished the solution of a psychological prob- 

 lem, namely, that it is by no means an innate natural pro- 

 pensity to do evil, but rather the force of circumstances which 

 drives man to vice and crime, and that the diviner portion of 

 his nature forthwith re-asserts itself, so soon as he is provided 

 with another more favourable sphere of action, and a fair op- 

 portunity is offered to him of earning his livelihood in an 

 honourable, independent manner by the free, unshackled de- 

 velopment of his mental and physical powers. 



Originally founded as a penal settlement for convicts sen- 

 tenced to transportation for long periods of years, and in fact 

 composed at first of such unpromising elements, this splendid 

 country is at present one of the wealthiest and most important 

 colonies of the British Crown, and close to that spot where, on 

 28th January, 1788, 850 criminals were landed, there to take 

 ifp their involuntary abode, there now rises in one of the nu- 



* In an old map of the year 1542, the Austrahan continent is named New Jav<i. 



B a 



