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THE
Jiuprir & ^mmnmial Jims
Quiaverumatgtied&xns,curoetrogo,etonmisinhocsum.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20, 1866.
It is not too soon to look forward to the
cessation of Transportation to the colony,
for an early anticipation of the event may
be of service. The year 1867 -will see the
beginning of the end. It will bring the
last convict ship to our shores, to mark
the era in which, we must look for a gradual,
probably a hasty, decrease of convict labour.
We may reckon on another eighteen
months or two years of things as they
are; but we cannot with assurance go
farther. The reins of the Convict Service
may change hands; Imperial rule may
cede them to colonial guidance ; Governor
Hampton may leave us, with all his im
perfections on his head ! and a reformed
Legislature may make convict labour a
bone of contention to crumble in parlia
mentary circumlocution. These, and many
more probabilities, plausible enough, should
urge us now in an effort to move the
Government to direct the convict labour
at its disposal on that work most likely to
satisfy the increasing wants of the colony.
With the past we have nothing to do.
What the Government might have done
with convict labour last year, or what it
should have done ten years ago, is not our
business now. We are concerned in the
future ; and though the Governor be
master of the 'situation;' though we
have neither hold nor check even on the
non-official members of our Legislative, it
is the business of the colony to make itself
heard in all chums which are temperate
and reasonable.
There is nothing to be gained by
entering into an enquiry concerning
the present distribution of labour.
Let us be thankful, and find in it no
little encouragement for the future.
But the Belgrwvia is daily expected, and
will place two hundred men at least in the
hands of the Comptroller-General. In a
few months* time the completion of the
North Fremantle Bridge will give him two
hundred more, and in December or January
next he may expect another couple of
hundreds fresh from the Convict Works of
the mother country. Not to go farther,
what might be done by these six hundred
men. alone before the end of next year?
The Governor can have no intention to
nurse them in the establishment at Fre
mantle. Government Honse, the Lunatic
Asylum, and the Fremantle Bridge, we will
say, are finished. There can be no wisdom,
then, in keeping carpenters, blacksmiths,
tinkers and tailors in the Convict Estab
lishment, at Fremantle. We would ex
pect to hear that it is converted into
an hospital and a place of safe keeping
for the refractory convict alone, while
in future ninety per cent, of effective
convict labour would be expended on
road-making, jetty building, town im
provement, the clearing of the river at
the Bar, and the deepening of it from
there to Guildford. At first sight this
may appear a formidable programme, but
in the hands of an anxious Government it
is one to be carried out with little
perplexity and in little time. To accom
plish it effectively and expeditiously, we
require the assistance of machinery.
What could hand-labour do, for instance,
to the improvement of the Swan; spoon
dredging is ridiculously inadequate to its
wants, while a steam-dredge is everything
it requires. What progress does the King
George's Sound road make ' blocked' by
jarrah-wood, and how will it be to
drive over when finished ? For £200 or
£300 the Government might obtain a
'stone-crusher' — a simple contrivance —
capable of crushing one hundred tons of
road metal in a day; and with such
assistance, our roads might be made
soundly and permanently in half the time
now taken. It has been found in Victoria
that the ' stone-crusher' enables a handful
of men to do the work of a hundred.
As the Government intend, we believe,
to procure a steam-dredge, and have
undertaken the work on the Perth and
Fremantle jetties, and the clearing of the
Bar~at the mouth of the river, we have but
to seek for despatch. With our road
making it is far different. We yet require
the promise of much more extensive
operations than have hitherto been
attempted. The sandy obstruction on the
line of the King George's Sound road
not many miles from Perth, is but
one in a score of serious obstacles to
our progress. Boad-making and the
prosecution of internal lines of com
munication are required in the North
and in the South, and in the absence of
Road Boards we should wish to see our
Agricultural Societies setting forth to the
Government the work of greater importance
required in their districts. It would be
well to know the intention of the Govern
ment in this important matter, and we
may not hear of it from the Legislative
Council meetings.
? ♦ ?
On Friday next the Legislative Council
will meet for the transaction of public
business. We expect the first day's work
will, as usual, be restricted to the reading
of the titles of the various Bills before the
Council, and the Governor's speech. If
we are at all conversant with the affairs
of the Colony, we may anticipate that Hi^
Excellency's speech on this occasion will
be a most favourable one ; but the Bills
are of no public importance, with one
exception — that to give a preferable lien
on wool and to make mortgages of sheep
and cattle valid without delivery to the
mortgagee. The Scab Act appears to be
shelved. The squatters, seemingly, don't
know what they really do want, if they want
anything at all. The Government are
patient with them, and prefer seeing some
thing like agreement among the flock
owners themselves, to thrusting any
measures on them. It is to be hoped we
shall hear of our non-official members at
this meeting, and that through them we
shall learn something of our memorial for
Representative Reform. Has Me. Cardwell
acknowledged the receipt of this memorial,
or has he not ?
? *. ?
Whatever tends to make money plentiful
in the old country tends to improve the
Colonies : and when we he hear of finan
cial disasters in England, we may look for
approaching changes of an unfavourable
character to ourselves. Since the month
of March the money market in England
has been marked by fear, and some an
ticipation of the panic which the telegrams
from Bombay have just conveyed to us.
One grand company after another have
come to an end, and many speculative
projects, in which millions sterling were
concerned, have collapsed, and spread
consternation and distrust in all directions.
The London Joint Stock Company has
come down with a crash, to display a
career of culpable recklessness and fraud.
One person alone has plundered this
concern of £284,000. The AsGiiO-GKEEK
Steam Communication is the magnificent
title of another bubble which has burst,
and made startling disclosures. Two
company-fledging Greeks have decamped
with the round sum of £50,000 from the
' Steam Communication,' 'while two dis
tinguished naval officers have mulcted it
in what are called douceurs — Anglo-oribes —
for the benefit of their names and titles
to assist in robbing a credulous public.
Admiral Elliot is one of them. The most
important failures which we yet know of
are those of the old houses of Overend,
Gueney & Co., and Sir Morton Peto. The
first is perhaps one of the largest private
discounting establishments in the world, and
the other one of the great manufacturing
firms in England. These are catastrophies
on a colossal scale, which must shake the
financial fabric of the country. We have
reports of the suspension of other two
Banking Companies, and the probabilities
are that next mail will bring us tidings of
half-a-dozen more. The Bank of England
has run up discount to nine per cent., and
the Government have suspened the Bank
charter. We may expect then to hear of
a repetition of '47, with all its financial
convulsions.
It is impossible for us now to ascertain
the real cause of this panic : no doubt
continental affairs and the unheard-of
fall in the Cotton Market have to do with
it: but there is something else alarming.
The reduction in the price of cotton,
we believe, is at the bottom of Gurney &
Co.'s suspension, but with the firm of Sir
M. Peto, and the other companies we have
named, we must look for another cause.
It is a pity that the 'Old Lady' in
Threadneedle Street could not hold her
rate of discount always at nine per cent.
to a certain class of the financial com
munity. No sooner is money cheap in
England than numerous ' mushroom con
cerns' spring up, and entice enormous
sums of money from the public, only to
manipulate by mismanagement or fraud.
When these explode, as explode they
must, then follows the general panic, and
the presumption for the time that there is
danger in ever security ; every scheme and
company are suspected, and drop lower
and lower in market value, until, as has
often occurred, the sound share ihe fate of
the unsound. This baneful consequence
of the operations of professional jobbers,
coupled with the ever-increasing magni
tude of the transactions of established
Banking Houses in England, hazard the
safety of the financial world. The one
ruins thousands, and shakes the confidence
of the community ; the other becomes too
extensive for its management to overtake.
What business do we expect a Banking
Company to undertake, for instance, which
pays £12,000 a year for rental of one of
its offices ! Yet we find this sum con
sidered not too much for a Joint Stock
Bank to pay for the ground floor of a
building in London.
Though the Banks of England, France,
and Holland, are in excess of bullion, many
months must elapse before we hear of
money being at a price to facilitate trade,
and raise the Home Market. The English
Wool Sales last month have beyond doubt
been injured, and we shall be fortunate if
the next sales bring last year's quotations.
? «. ?
The Peninsular and Oriental Steam
Navigation Company have just discovered
that they have no steam vessels really
suited to convey the mail from Galle to
King George's Sound. Their steamers
plying between these stations require to
carry coal for seventeen days, and to this
dead weight in their snips' bunks they
attribute the vexatious delays which
constantly occur. They have now deputed
a special Agent to pacify the Victorian
Government, and induce them to offer a
ten years' contract for the mail service.
They will not build vessels suited to the
Australian line under the present two
year's contract, and, in effect, tell the
Victorians that unless they please to
engage the services of the Company for
ten years, they (the Victorians) must be
content with the regularly-irregular con
veyance they now have. The Melbourne
people, however, are likely to entertain
quite another opinion. They don't appear
inclined to induce the Oriental and
Peninsular Company to build the three
powerful steamers they offer to build by
binding themselves to a long contract, nor
are they inclined to be satisfied with the
services of the Company. They are aware
that it has little title to their confidence —
that the service at one time was performed
punctually, and that the high-handed
proposal just made is awakened as much
by the fact of a rival postal route as by a
concern in the complaints of Victoria.
Australia is not wholly dependent on the
Galle route for the transmission of her
mails with Europe. A mail service by
way of Timor and Batavia is already
opened, and another via Panama is about
to commence, and the Company which
projects it have sent out to Melbourne one
of four steamers specially built for the
service. This vessel made the voyage
from Plymouth to Melbourne in fifty-six
days, and has even suggested a mail route
by way of the Cape itself.
As for ourselves we cannot over-estimate
the advantages we should derive from a
regular steam communication with the
Tndian Archipelago and the neighbouring
colonies. It is earnestly to be hoped that
the Batavian Company will be projected,
and bring us in connection with the
metropolis of the whole of Dutch India.
It would bring us earlier European and
Intercolonial intelligence, and, it is scarcely
to be doubted, would be the means of
starting a profitable commerce into life.
The Dutch possessions in Tni^i^ which are
governed in Batavia, contain a population
of some twenty-five million souls, including
about twelve thousand Europeans. The
total revenue is about £6,800,000 and the
expenditure £4,000,000. The dependencies
are in a flourishing condition, and their
people active in every trading enterprize.
? ♦ ?
Whether Austria will thrash Russia, or
whether Prussia will thrash Austria, are
questions which awaken little interest on
this side of the. world. The feud, too,
between the two Continental Powers is
such a very old one, we are readily dis
posed to become tired hearing of it, and, if
at all concerned, to regard the quarrels of
the two great plunderers of poor Denmark,
as the desirable consequence of their
high-handed pillage. The last mail in
formed us that war was inevitable : so did^^^.
the mail of last month, and the one befora^B|
that; yet there is great probability there ^^
will be no war at alL It is not in the
least alarming to find the German Powers
in a state of perspiration. Their exag
gerated sense of honour requires this as a
prelude to settling their differences without
the arbitrament of the sword, and such a
settlement their common interest suggests.
A war between the two Powers would
probably terminate by defeating the desires
of Prussia in Schleswig Holstein, while
Austria would show greater wisdom in
being content with the two million francs
paid for a Lauenburg, and forsaking her
position in Holstein altogether, than en
tering into a sanguinary war with Prussia.
The success of Prussia would be doubtful,
because she dare not expect the other
powers to remain peaceful spectators of a
struggle. That of Austria would be
doubtful, because she has something re~
quiring more attention than the defence of
her army corps'in Holstein. Her Italian
provinces place her in a peculiar position.
Italy has long been looking for an oppor
tunity to recover Venetia: in a rupture
between Austria and Prussia she would
find one. Italy would only be too happy
to see such a rupture, even though she
were dragged into the conflict, and she has
done her best to foment one. Should she
be disappointed in this, there is every
probability of another war between Austria
and Italy. It is true the Italian Govern
ment are surrounded by financial embar
rassment, and forced to keep a nominal
army of some 4O07000 men, so long as the
Venetian question remains unsolved. But
a war would not involve the usual increase
of expenditure to a State with such an
army — a perfect war establishment — and
the enthusiasm it would evoke might lead
the people to accept fresh taxation, and
positively give the Italian Government
financial relief. It is true the Empebob of
the French has declared he will not assist
Italy in any aggressive operations against
the provinces of Austria, yet the Italians
are not likely to remain much longer in a
state of armed peace. While it is doubtful
that Austria and Prussia will go to war,
there is every probability that Italy and
Austria will.
? ♦ ?
We lately announced the expected arrival
of salmon ova destined for the waters of
the river Plenty, in Tasmania. We now
learn that the Lincolnshire had reached
Hobson Bay with 18 boxes, containing
103,000salmonova, and 16,000 salmontrout
ova. The whole was immediately tran
shipped to H.MC.S. Victoria,, for Hobart
Town, where the vessel arrived on the
4th ultimo. Immediately the ship's
anchors were down at Hobart Town fixe
covering of the fore part of the vessel, in
which the boxes were stowed, was removed,
and much anxiety was manifested to see
how the ova, which, are carefully embedded
in moss, had fared during their passage.
It is gratifying to know that 80 per cent,
of, the ova was living. The former shipment
of salmon arrived at Hobart Town on the
20th April, 1864, and the fish commenced
hatching on the 9th May. Only about 30
per cent, of that shipment arrived safely.
Tasmania has done her share of this
work well. She has voted her money
freely. Victoria has paid half as much,
and even New Zealand has managed twice
to spare £200 towards the expense of
the undertaking. Tasmania, too, has been
long in possession of English fish for its
rivers ; in the corporation reservoirs at
Hobart Town, there are fully 30,000
English perch.
Enclosed in the ice-house with the
salmon ova were two bundles of heather and
a few shrubs, as an experiment, to try this
plan of sending trees. They arrived in the
most perfect condition possible. Indeed
there was not even a decay'eiiHeaiJet pn the
heaths, and the whole of the plants were in
as perfect health as if they had only been
lifted out of the nursery. So much for
the salmon-ova experiments ; the employ
ment of Her Majesty's ships ; and the
enterprize of our neighbours.
$