being indicated by some very marked natural features, extending from the sea-shore to the western boundary of New South Wales, and the country along its whole line being of so broken a character as to impede all overland communication between that colony and what was then the Moreton Bay District. In accordance with the terms of this clause, numerous petitions, extending over several years, were forwarded for presentation to Her Majesty by the settlers throughout the Moreton Bay District, praying for separation at the specified parallel; and, more especially, one petition, dating so far back as the 30th of December, 1850, from the settlers in the Clarence and Richmond Rivers District, the territory now in dispute.* Owing to some representations-or, as the later petitions boldly state, misrepresentations-from New South Wales, which never willingly parted with a foot of her vast territories (the old Commission of 1787 extending over Van Diemen's Land, New Zealand, and more generally the whole of the Western and Southern Pacific waters and islands), this reserved right of Her Majesty to fix the boundary line between the parent colony and the new offshoot was not exercised, and the matter was referred to the decision of the Governor of New South Wales. By him a line was chosen coinciding with the twenty-eighth parallel from the coast to the culminating table-land of the Great Range, and, from thence to the west, with the twenty-ninth parallel. In this manner, the whole of the Clarence and Richmond Rivers District now remains within the colony of New South Wales. It is well watered by these two navigable streams and by several smaller ones. Settlement, too, having grown from the south northwards, its pastures contain more numerous flocks and herds, and bear evidence, in public and private improvements, of a longer occupancy than more northern tracts. These, and other considerations, render its possession of considerable importance to either colony. Indeed, though small in comparison with the huge territories with which we are now dealing, the district itself is larger than England, and contains some of the most fruitful land in the world. Omitting, however, the rival claims of the two colonies - if, indeed, New South Wales has any better claim than possession - omitting, too, all consideration of the natural features of the country, the mere element of distance would appear to be strongly in favour of the Clarence and Richmond settlers in their desire to annex

* See later Petition to the Queen, from the inhabitants of the Clarence and Richmond Rivers, for annexation to Queensland, dated September, 1860.

themselves to Queensland. Grafton, their central town, is 470 miles from Sydney, while it is only 180 miles from Brisbane, the capital of the new colony. Indeed, these settlers now transact all their private affairs with Brisbane, though, in the case of the public improvements of their district, they exhibit a woful balance-sheet against the Sydney Exchequer, into which their custom duties, assessment on stock, and the proceeds of their land-sales necessarily go. The annexation of this district to Queensland would place Sydney in the middle of a seaboard of 600 miles in extent, as the crow flies, while she would still remain the capital of a territory three times as large as Great Britain. Unless, therefore, it should be thought desirable that a new colony should insert itself between Queensland and New South Wales-an event which, in the extremely unsatisfactory position of Australian land tenure, and the difficulty of fairly apportioning the expenditure on public works among the more outlying districts, is almost certain to occur unless some such proposition as the Clarence and Richmond settlers suggest should be adopted-it would seem more generally advantageous to the settlers of this great eastern seaboard of the continent that the Imperial Act of 1850 should be more strictly interpreted.

But though we are of opinion that the internal administration and improvement of the Australian group of colonies demand the annexation of the Clarence and Richmond Rivers settlers to Queensland, yet the colony of Queensland itself is at present of gigantic proportions, and must be prepared, in its turn, to throw off large and early northern offshoots. According to the present Parliamentary boundaries of the new colony, Queensland extends from the termination of the Clarence and Richmond Rivers District to the extreme northern point of Australia, and from the shores of the Pacific to the 138th meridian of east longitude. She thus possesses a length of 1,300 miles, and a mean breadth of 900 miles, with a Pacific and Torres Strait seaboard of, as the crow flies, 2,250 miles. In other words, she is somewhat larger than Great Britain and Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, and the new Kingdom of Italy, all put together. And yet such is the rapidity of Australian squatter settlement, that our latest information leads us to expect its extension to the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria ere these pages have passed through the press.

Indeed, as it may be very shortly necessary to bring the new colony within more reasonable bounds, we shall here briefly point out what we conceive her permanent limits ought to be.

They were suggested so early as 1846 by Sir Thomas Mitchell, no incompetent authority, in the course of his explorations within tropical Australia. Advancing beyond the twenty-fifth parallel of latitude, he found the broad, almost level table-lands of the Great Range interrupted by a natural barrier, running at right angles to its main axis, and, in other respects, similar to the broken line of country we have already mentioned as crossing the same Range to the south of the Clarence and Richmond Rivers District. The territory to the north of this natural barrier he proposed to erect into a new and independent colony, under the name of Capricornia-to express the country 'under the tropics, from the parallel of 25° south, where Nature has set up her own landmarks not to be disputed.' This broken tract of country quickly terminates towards the north, and the table-lands again resume their broad and undulating character. Dr. Leichhardt, however, who pushed discovery still further to the north, found another and a similar break crossing the Range at the eighteenth parallel, after which the country again opens into Captain Stokes' Plains of Promise, round the shores of the Gulf. Thus, giving Capricornia' an extent of seven degrees of latitude that is, close on 500 miles of Pacific seaboard-there would still be abundant material for a third new colony on the shores of the Gulf. According to this arrangement, coinciding with strongly-marked natural features, the Great Coast Range and its Pacific seaboard would be divided into the following sections-New South Wales, 64 or 5 degrees of latitude, according as her present hold of the Clarence and Richmond Rivers settlers is confirmed or otherwise; . Queensland, 5 or 4 degrees of latitude, according to the same condition; Capricornia,' 7 degrees; and a new colony on the Gulf, 10 degrees. Such an arrangement would certainly allot to Queensland a less extended seaboard than her neighbours; but this would be more than compensated by her much greater breadth inland, while it would place her capital and chief seaport in the middle of her maritime district. Indeed, it would still leave her a territory quite as large as the parent colony of New South Wales. This arrangement would, however, be strongly opposed by Queensland herself, since it would deprive her of the Fitzroy River and the Port Curtis District; and young colonies are quite as tenacious of their unexplored territorial privileges as the oldest States of Europe.

As we have so far postponed our examination of the general' resources of the new settlement, in considering its political boundaries, perhaps we may be excused if we take a passing glance at the relative positions of the other members of the

group. New South Wales, even should she lose the Clarence and Richmond Rivers District, would still possess an extent of upwards of 300,000 square miles; though whether she shall continue to preserve these very ample territories must mainly depend upon her skill in managing her outlying districts. At the present moment the settlers dwelling between the rivers Darling and Murrumbidgee, both in New South Wales and Victoria, are desirous of separation, on the old plea of neglect, and have already forwarded petitions to the Imperial Parliament, praying for recognition of their claims. We cannot, however, regard very hopefully the prospects of a new colony some 300 miles removed from the seaboard in a country so deficient in internal water communication; and, in the interest of the settlers themselves, we should prefer an extension of those powers of local self-government which have been successfully introduced and established in the gold-fields of Victoria.* Should the Murray and Murrumbidgee settlers adopt this view of the matter, we may fairly infer that the colony of New South Wales has now arrived at its last stage of dismemberment, and that its present territories will be left intact-unless, indeed, under some more violent disruption of the country. The colony of Victoria, the wealthiest and most compact, though far the smallest of the group, contains 86,831 square miles-an extent, however, which, notwithstanding her diminutive appearance among her sisterhood, closely coincides with the area of Great Britain. Her next neighbour, however, the colony of South Australia, again expands into giant proportions. Its present area is about 300,000 square miles; and, in all probability, it will shortly receive a further accession of territory from a neutral strip of the continent lying to the north of it, between the 138th meridian, or western boundary of Queensland, and the 141st meridian, or eastern boundary of the colony of Western Australia. Much of this area, however, consists of trackless desert; and though recent explorations have shown it to be

* By later intelligence, we perceive that the colony of Victoria is extending a somewhat similar principle of local self-government to her various other outlying districts, including her above-mentioned territories between the Murray and Murrumbidgee. By her new Local Government Act, each district becomes entitled to 21. from the State Revenue for each 11. raised by taxation under its Local Board, with the further addition of 2007. for each mile of main road. The more general extension of some such measure throughout the whole of the Australian Colonies would, most probably, check any too minute disintegration, to which at present there appears a tendency.

interspersed with large tracts of pastoral and even agricultural country, the isolated position of these oases, and their dependence on the Port of Adelaide for imports and exports, will in all probability avert any dismemberment of this colony for very many years to come. But the palm of size must be awarded to the colony of Western Australia. Its present area exceeds a million of square miles-an extent which its population, notwithstanding the extraordinarily expansive powers of squatter occupancy, is wholly unable to overrun. The time, however, cannot be very far distant when the excellent soil and the broad navigable rivers of its north-west portion, and, above all, its propinquity to China, India, and the Indian Archipelago, will attract settlement thither, destined to a more rapid progress than has attended the Swan River colonists. Indeed, a project is now on foot throughout the more eastern Australian colonies to form a British settlement round Cambridge Gulf and its streams; and other equally favourable tracts along this vast north-west coast have more than once attracted the attention of both home and colonial enterprise. With the execution of these schemes will commence a disintegration of the vast territories over which the Governor of the Swan River settlement now nominally holds sway.

This breaking up of a whole continent into distinct States, independent of each other, but under the light and delicate rule of one Imperial Government, is an exceedingly curious movement in the history of civilisation. It is essayed under singularly favourable circumstances; and though the nature of our subject will oblige us to lay bare some of the minor difficulties of Australian colonisation, yet there would certainly appear to be no inherent defect to mar the success of the experiment upon which the Australian people are now entering.

One blemish, indeed, now almost erased by the very great efforts of the colonists of the eastern group, it is proposed by a late Royal Commission to perpetuate on Australian soil; and we cannot proceed to the more immediate subject of this article without here recording our strong protest against the recommendation to continue and extend transportation to Western Australia. The views of the Convict Commission on this subject have, we believe, taken wholly by surprise everyone who has watched the progress of Australian settlement and the singular promise which that portion of our colonial empire gives of a great and glorious future. Nor can the willingness of the colonists of its western quarter to receive convicts afford the least pretext for so wide a departure from the principles of justice and