^44 COLONIZATION. 



disgraced by ignorance, debased by superstition, and 

 defiled by slavery. In Sydney we beheld with 

 wonder what scarce half a century had sufficed to 

 effect ; for where almost within the memory of man 

 the savage ranged the desert wastes and trackless 

 forests, a noble city has sprung as though by 

 magic from the ground, which will ever serve both 

 as a monument of English enterprise, and as a 

 beacon from whence the lii'ht of Christian civi- 

 lization shall spread through the dark and gloomy 

 recesses of ignorance and guilt. The true history of 

 our Australian possessions ; the causes which have 

 led to their settlement ; the means by which they 

 have been established ; the circumstances by which 

 they have been influenced ; and the rapid, nay, 

 unexLimpled prosperity to which they have attained ; 

 present some of the most curious and most import- 

 ant laws of colonization to our notice. Without 

 attempting so far to deviate from ray present pur- 

 pose as to enter here on a deduction from the data 

 to which I have alluded, it cannot be denied that, 

 in the words of an eloquent writer in Blackwood, 

 *' a great experiment in the faculty of renovation 

 in the human character, has found its field in the 

 solitudes of this vast continent : that the experiment 

 has succeeded to a most unexampled and unexpected 

 degree : and that the question is now finally decided 

 between severity and discipline." What else re- 

 mains, what great designs and unfathomed purposes, 

 are yet reserved to grace this distant theatre, I pause 

 not now to guess. The boldest conjecture would 



