Queensland, Tasmania, and New Zealand,
one after another, attained the same liberties; all have now
representative governments, modelled on those of the mother country,
but inevitably without the aristocratic element. Such an aristocracy
as that of England is the natural growth of many centuries and of
circumstances hardly likely to be duplicated--a fact which the Prince
Consort once had occasion to lay very clearly before Louis Napoleon,
anxious to surround himself with a similar nobility, if only he could
manage it. But though the aristocratic element be lacking, the
patriotic passion and the sentiment of loyalty are abundantly
present; nor has the mother country any intellectual pre-eminence
over her colonies, drawn immeasurably nearer to her in thought and
feeling as communication has become rapid and easy.

There is something almost magical at first sight in the
transformation which the Australian colonies have undergone in a very
limited space of time; yet it is but the natural result of the
untrammelled energy of a race sovereignly fitted to "subdue the
earth." It is curious to read how in 1810 the convict settlement at
Botany Bay--name of terror to ignorant home criminals, shuddering at
the long, dreadful voyage and the imagined horrors of a savage
country--was almost entirely nourished on imported food, now that the
vast flocks and herds of Australia and New Zealand contribute no
inconsiderable proportion of the food supply of Britain.

The record of New Zealand is somewhat less brilliant than that of its
gigantic neighbour. This is due to somewhat less favourable
circumstances, to a nobler and less manageable race of aborigines;
the land perhaps more beautiful, is by the very character of its
beauty less subduable. Its political life is at least as old as that
of the old Australian colony, its constitution being granted about
the same time; but this colony has needed, what Australia has not,
the armed interference of the Home Government in its quarrels with
the natives--a race once bold and warlike, able to hold their own
awhile even against the English soldiers, gifted with eloquence, with
a certain poetic imagination, and no inconsiderable intelligence. It
seemed, too, at one moment as if these Maoris would become generally
Christianised; but the kind of Christianity which they saw
exemplified in certain colonists, hungry for land and little
scrupulous as to the means by which they could gratify that hung