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discountenanced by the more enlightened citizens of the more 

 civilized nations of the world in our time ; and hence the work of 

 acclimatisation is comparatively easy, and a gratifying reciprocity of 

 feeling and effort is exhibited by its friends, in different countries. 

 In applying ourselves to the work in this colony, we may be animated 

 by such a retrospective glance as that which I have taken at what 

 has been effected in this way, with a view to multiply the means of 

 subsistence and the modes of enjoyment, as well as to augment the 

 attractiveness of the natural scenery and the charms of social life, in 

 England. Coming into the inheritance of these things, both as a 

 matter of custom and right, as such of us did who were born there, 

 we are very apt to take it for granted that they existed from time 

 immemorial, and to think no more of them than we do of the common 

 blessings of light and air. But when we find, upon inquiry and 

 reflection, that the energy, the enterprise, and the forethought of 

 acclimatisers in the sixteenth century mainly contributed to make 

 England the picturesque garden which it is in the nineteenth, we 

 may not unreasonably ask ourselves whether it is not in our power 

 to confer similar obligations upon those who are to come after us in 

 Australia. When we are invited to make some little sacrifices of 

 time and money for posterity, we should reject as a malignant insult 

 the sneering rejoinder of " What has posterity done for us V The 

 question which each generation has to propose to itself under such 

 circumstances is this, What have preceding generations done'for our 

 own ? And if any man will deliberately sit down and compute the 

 sum of his obligations — 'the magnificence of the inheritance he enjoys 

 — the legacy bequeathed to him in art, literature, and science by the 

 illustrious dead ; — if he will take into account the inventions which 

 have virtually trebled the term of his existence — which have multi- 

 plied his delights and mitigated his sufferings — which have given 

 the day labourer of to-day the command of comforts and enjoyments 

 inaccessible to the most powerful monarchs two centuries ago — which 

 have made life infinitely happier and more beautiful for all, than it 

 was formerly possible to be to the most favoured children of fortune 

 — if he will honestly calculate this debt, " the long result of time," 

 he will be startled by its magnitude, and will feel that nothing but 

 the basest ingratitude or the most degrading selfishness could 

 influence him in refusing to bestow upon posterity the slender pittance 

 it may be in his power to offer, not in requital, but in acknowledge- 

 ment, of what he owes to those who have departed "to join the 

 majority." 



