OUR SOCIAL COXDHIOXS. 303 



warning of what is to be avoided. The Dutch not quite three 

 centuries ago founded a colony at Batavia, wliicli flourished and 

 cni-ichcd itself beyond anticipation for a tiuic. But the records of the 

 settlement show hov/ bad habits aud :iii indolent life gradually 

 enfeebled the dominant race nnd ])r(.'])arrd the way for the condition 

 of decay now found there. The S])aniard in South Aiuerica, and the 

 Portuguese at Goa and Macao, established a brilliaut record in the 

 sixteenth century ; but the staple and fibre of the race decayed, and 

 no one reading the history of their past would recognise a trace of 

 the old spirit in their degenerate descendants. In Australia we are 

 protected against the danger of a mixed population, and the struggle 

 against primitive conditions has been too earnest in the past to leave 

 much tune for decay. The danger will come, if over, now that the 

 pioneer work is done and the people are settling down to the enjdy- 

 ment of those established conditions which the labours of the pioneers 

 have made for them. It will be for the active outdoor habits and 

 athletic pursuits of Australians to preserve the men and women of the 

 future from degenerating into the type of indolent Creole or fibreless 

 mestizo which now remains as the only surviving testimony to the 

 colonising activity of other nations in other times. The moral force 

 required to leaven the growing civilisation and conditions of life in 

 these communities, far removed as we are from the influences of old- 

 world culture, are a love of music and art and an appreciation of 

 literatui'e. The signs of this are encoviraging, as we have seen, and 

 it is well that a community which has witnessed so much material 

 progress has not neglected the finer graces of civilisation. To do so 

 is a peril of young commonwealths, but we cannot always be young, 

 and communities age as much by progress and development as by the 

 tale of years. 



A glance at the resources on which the superstructure of these 

 social conditions has been built up will supply satisfactory evidences 

 as to their stability. We have passed through two or three excep- 

 tionally bad years, and for the moment the reproductive power of 

 these resources has been severely taxed. But they have more than 

 stood the strain which, beginning with the Baring scare, has left few 

 parts of the world entirely untouched. We have learnt to correct 

 some of our extravagances of living, and to recognise that the 

 phenomenal prosperity witnessed in New South Wales is not above 

 the incidence of those ordinary mischances which wait on prosperity 

 everywhere. We have a Public Debt, roundly speaking, of some sixty 

 millions, and we pay interest at the rate of about two millions and a 

 qur.rter a year. Our population spends upwards of forty-six millions 

 annually on the daily wants of life. But against this we have public 

 works to the value of eighty-five millions, the railway system being 

 worth about forty millions of that sum. Last year our State services 

 cost us about eight and a half millions, while our gross revenue stood 

 at nine and a half millions. We have sold and unsold public lands 

 of which the proportion still unpaid for amounts to nearly twice the 

 total of our Public Debt ; and from public works, rents, and fees 

 alone we draw about two and three-quarter millions per year, being 

 about half a million more than our annual interest charge. The 

 resources behind these figures are the pastoral, agricultural, and 



