POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. 



146? 



practically recognized. Capital and population are still the chief wants of the Australian 

 Continent, which is capable of carrying many times the number of people at present 

 found within its borders. Now that the facts of Australian progress have been clearly 

 set forth, and its story has been fairly told, we may expect to see the rate of develop- 

 ment progressively increased, and the problem of the future worked out with accelerated 

 energy. No reader of these pages can repress the thought that the future of Australia 

 must be a great and brilliant one such a future, perhaps, as the history of no country 

 in the world has yet recorded. We have everything in our favour. Far removed from 

 international jealousies and the turmoil of European complications set apart in a pleasant 

 sea to work out our destiny untroubled by the distractions of contemporary politics 

 all favouring circumstances would seem to have combined together to usher in the 

 second century of our history under the most auspicious conditions. The Centennial 

 Exhibition held in Melbourne, in 1888, was not only a notable witness to Australian 

 progress in the past, but a gauge of prosperity in the future, and a landmark in its 

 history from which the past as well as the years that are to come will be measured. 

 The Colonies have yet to unite upon a common basis of federation before the full 

 measure of the results of Australian development will be attainable. But the signs of 

 the times point to the day when a united Australia will evolve itself from the Federated 

 Colonies, directed by a central representative authority in their national affairs, and auto- 

 nomously governed by their own elected Parliaments so far as the internal policy of 

 each is concerned. This is still a dream of the future. That it is not an over-sanguine 

 one the chapters of an Australasian story which have been successively told in these 

 volumes will sufficiently attest. For the most daring flight of prophecy, and the most 

 dazzling vision of the wonderful future that is to be, could do no more than rival in 



O 



audacity the dreams, so magically realized, of the argonauts of those adventurous argosies 



of little more than a hundred years ago- 

 Sailing in search of some new continent. 

 Whose rushing keels made music as they went 





5 W*A socire, fu jTi rr iT ST.*. 



