Australia s Heritage. 
61 
ardently desirous that England should annex 
their islands ; and their occupation by France 
for the extension of her malign convict system 
will constitute a menace to the Australian 
colonies, leaving alone the danger to them which 
the possession of such a magnificent base as 
these islands would give to a Power who may 
some day be at war with England. But now as 
to the group itself. 
Next to the Fijis and the Solomon Islands, 
the New Hebrides are the finest cluster of 
islands in the South Pacific ; and were British 
settlers in the group freed from their present 
harassing disabilities in the way of employing 
native labour to work their plantations it would 
leave Fiji far behind in the development of its 
abounding resources. It possesses magnificent 
harbours, forests of timber awaiting the axeman 
and saw-miller, land suitable for coffee and 
cotton, and other tropical products, a climate 
that is no hotter than that of Ceylon or Samoa, 
and a native population which, within two years 
after the declaration of British sovereignty, 
would, owing to the influence of the English 
missionaries in the group, be as amenable to the 
precepts of civilisation as the too-highly 
