100 AUSTRALIA AND NEW HOLLAND. 



CHAPTER IX. * 



AUSTRALIA OR NEW HOLLAND. 



The colony of New South Wales is exceeding precocious, 

 approaching fast to commercial and political greatness. It 

 promises fair to occupy a commanding position with respect to 

 the quarter of the globe in which it is situated. There is very 

 little doubt that when sufficiently powerful, the colonists will 

 shake off the yoke of the mother country, and erect themselves 

 into a separate sovereignty, such a spirit being abundantly 

 evident, even at present. They have not as yet the strength 

 necessary for an undertaking of so great a magnitude ; but 

 none of the inclination is wanting, particularly since the home 

 government has threatened to subject them to what they con- 

 sider unjust taxation. Already the storm-cloud has began to 

 show itself above the horizon, and we will venture to predict, 

 the time is not far distant when it will overspread the heavens, 

 and shower upon them all the horrors of family strife. A 

 population composed, as this chiefly is, of the most turbulent 

 and refractory, and of the self-exiled, who have been driven 

 from their native land by misery and persecution, are not 

 likely to remain long in patient subjection to a country which 

 has been the source of their former misfortunes and disgraces, 

 and with the recollections of which so much is mingled to 

 awaken the bad feelings of the heart. They are constantly 

 looking forward for the severance of the tie which binds their 

 new home to the parent land. The vicious, because such 



