ligious establishments is now fairly raised, not as regards Ireland only, for we at once allow that the settlement of it must embrace the whole empire, since we have no idea of its being possible, as Mr. Noel seems to think, to confine it to Ireland,— and, secondly, that this question of religious establishments is now practically raised, in very different circumstances indeed, and on a very different footing, from those which marked the recent keen discussion of it within the last few years. When it arose, some short time ago, it was canvassed very much as a polemical controversy in theology: the abstract lawfulness of Establishments was the topic generally agitated; and the duty of nations and communities, in reference to religion, and the countenance to be given to it, formed the thread of not a little subtile and intricate argumentation. At that time, also, it seemed as if the defence of establishments had the advantage of many tendencies in all the existing Churches towards improvement and revival; so at least many of their defenders believed: in Scotland, the work of reform and of extension was going on; in England, evangelical piety seemed to be on the increase; and even in Ireland, when the Appropriation Clause was so strenuously resisted by a large portion of the religious public, it was under the impression that the Irish clergy were becoming really missionaries, and certainly without the least suspicion that the party whom their aid then enabled to defeat that measure, in opposition, would immediately on their return to power, exact, as the price of the preserved integrity of the Church's wealth, the endowment of Romanism out of the public funds. Now, all these things are changed. Not to speak of what has happened in Scotland to make even politicians of influence and ability less confident of the good working of the existing establishment than before, is it not a deepening impression in the minds of all serious thinkers, that the resources of the English Church are now more and more aiding in the propagation of error instead of truth? And in regard to Ireland, what fair promises in the Episcopal Establishment have been blighted? and who would purchase the small infinitesimal portion of its endowments that actually goes to the support of a zealous and pure Christianity, at the cost of a large grant to the priests of Rome? Meanwhile, religious men and religious communities are forced, more and more, into positions of independence: and there is evidently rising a spirit which all the sordid policy of such shrewd judges of "human nature" as our Quarterly Reviewer, with Sydney Smith to back him, will not purchase or tame. We cannot but think that, in this crisis, a breathing time is allowed, if men would learn wisdom, ere the inevitable crash comes. Why should it alarm us, or seem formidable and re

volutionary, to avow that the time has come, when it is a fair question whether the least of two evils may not be, the giving up of existing endowments? We must not enter into the question farther at present; but we cannot close without expressing our conviction, that if it were grappled with, in this time of peace, by statesmen and churchmen, seeking only a wise practical adjustment, it might be found to have much less of real connexion with the support of good government and sound religion, than many looking at it from a distance might suppose. That the nation and its rulers are bound to honour Christ, and maintain his cause, is a doctrine which even those of its advocates who had quitted an Establishment for conscience sake, may maintain with as much tenacity and strength of conviction as ever; but they may hold, at the same time, that the nation and its rulers would, on the whole, best discharge this duty, in present circumstances, by having no established Churches, in the common sense of that phrase at all. And as to the views of statesmen and politicians, it might be not unwise for them to consider, whether it may not be safer and better to have all the Churches of Christ unestablished alike, rather than to have the present plans of endowment made the instrument of corrupting the more pliant among them, and irritating justly the more conscientious and sincere.

THE

NORTH BRITISH REVIEW.

FEBRUARY, 1846.

ART. I.-Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, accompanied by a Geological Map, and Diagrams and Figures of the Organic Remains. By P. E. de STRZELECKI. 1 vol. London: 1845.

Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia, and overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound, in the year 1840-1, sent by the Colonists of South Australia, with the sanction and support of the Government, including an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Aborigines, and the state of their relations with Europeans. By E. J. EYRE, ResidentMagistrate, Murray River. 2 vols. London: 1845.

WHEN time has ripened history, and the relative importance of historical events is valued by their results, no event, perhaps, of the seventeenth century, will be deemed so important as the landing of the first English Colonists on the American Continent, in the year 1610; and few of the eighteenth more important, than the settlement of the first colony in the other new world of Australia in 1788. England, during the last two centuries, has been sowing the seeds of mighty empires in America, Africa, India, and Australia ; and in Europe her language, literature, manners, her principles of government, her ideas of the civil and religious rights of men in social union, have been making conquest of public mind and opinion in every country. England might exult in her glory, but for the reflection that, in all physical and intellectual existence, this maturity, this ripening and shedding of the seed, is but the prelude to the withering of the leaf, and the decay of the parent stem.

In the half century which has elapsed since Lieutenant-Colonel Collins unfurled the British flag on the shore of Sydney Cove,

VOL. IV. NO. VIII.

T

our

and, as Governor, took formal possession of the island-continent, the progress of this embryo empire of the southern hemisphere has not been so rapid, nor by such sound, well-grounded footsteps, as the of progress old American colonies was, in the corresponding period of their establishment. Already, in 1670, we find it stated by Sir Josiah Child, in his Discourses on Trade, that "our American plantations employ near two-thirds of all our English shipping, and thereby give constant sustenance, it may be, to 200,000 persons here at home." Barbadoes, the oldest, and then the most flourishing of our West India possessions, and Jamaica, conquered from the Spaniards in 1655, are probably included in this statement, among "our American plantations;" and our slave trade, which in 1680 was reckoned to take 300,000 slaves annually from the African coast, among the employments of our shipping, and the sustenance of our population ascribed to them. There were causes, however, both physical and social, why the development of our early American colonies was more rapid, healthy, and sound, than that of our colonies in Australia.

Our American colonies had the advantage of possessing various secondary staple products, such as tar, pitch, turpentine, potashes, spars, staves, which a wooded country, in the process of being cleared and made arable, yields to the industry of the first settlers. These rude articles, requiring no skill or capital, but simply labour to produce them, are in fact, necessaries of life, without which the movement of civilized society could scarcely go on, and which the old cultivated countries of Europe could not produce in sufficient abundance. Australia has no such minor staple articles, and no cheaply accessible markets for their sale, even if she could produce them. The isolated settler there cannot, as in America, produce with his axe, and the labour of his family, something of value, of small value indeed, but saleable or exchangeable, and thus apply his time profitably while his crops are growing, or the weather interrupts field-work. He has no secondary product to turn to at home with his family, and his spare days and hours are lost, or non-productive, compared to the settler's in America. Australia, wanting those minor staple products, wants also one main element of social prosperity, the middle class between the producers and the exporters of those products, the class of dealers who, as store-keepers in every village, (often the first inhabitants, and even the founders of the forest-village,) or as travelling merchants going from settler to settler, buy up or barter for the smallest quantities of those products, and carry trade and civilization into the depths of the back woods. The most ignorant of the working class of emigrants can appreciate the advantage of having a secondary branch

of industry on his own land besides the crops, buyers at his door to give something for the product, and, in the class of dealers, a visible step in the social scale, which is above his own, but is quite within his reach to attain for himself or his children. The tide of migration, therefore, from Europe, always sets most strongly towards the American shores. America had also, from the first, a staple article in tobacco, for the more wealthy class of emigrants, one requiring and remunerating the outlay of capital, and which other countries consume, and cannot produce of the same quality. As early as 1618, it was an article of export, and in 1620, warehouses were established in Holland, at Middleburg and Flushing, for the receiving and assorting of American tobacco. Rice was not extensively cultivated in the southern settlements until the eighteenth century. It is supposed that rice was first introduced into Carolina about 1702. The culture of silk was fruitlessly attempted in Georgia before the introduction of cotton. Tobacco, rice, and cotton, are now the great staple products on which much of the wealth and prosperity of the American empire is founded. Australia has not the physical advantage of producing any one staple article peculiar to her climates, soils, or mineral products. As a seat for colonies, she is the poorest of countries, in natural sources of wealth. Our colonies in Australia labour, also, under a social disadvantage from which our American colonies were exempt. In 1610, and for almost a century and a-half after that date, female work was, in all civilized society as then existing, almost as valuable as the work of men. The clothing material, linen and woollen, of all the labouring population, and even high up in the middle class, was produced by household industry, in that stage of the progress of society. In every family the females were constantly occupied in spinning, knitting, often in weaving, in bleaching, fulling, dyeing, or in preparing the raw material, produced at home, for those operations. Money was saved, or even gained by this family manufacturing. The wives and daughters of the pilgrimfathers in America, could earn by the spinning-wheel and loom, something for the family support, or save some outlay, as well as their husbands and brothers. The female half of the emigrant body were not an unproductive half in respect of the value of their labour, which they now are. In the progress of society, capital, skill, and machinery in factory-industry, have entirely extinguished this family-industry. The world is supplied with much cheaper and better clothing-material than the housewife and her daughters could spin and weave; and the use of finer stuff has refined the general taste, so that the rude, coarse clothing material of domestic manufacture, in a former state of society, is rejected by all. England was ripe for this change, from