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Leader (1850-1860), 24th January 1852, Edition Town of 2, Page 85, Untitled Article

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      Untitled Article

      How enviously the ghost of Raleigh must look up from his morning paper in Hades , asr . he reads the stories of the Galiforman and Australian gold discoveries El Dorado ? Here it is . Australia is the veritable Land of Gold . It grows there . " The iround is full of it , " writes an astounded and dis-Siaved employer of labour . In the soft mud on the banks of the rivers | in tho hard rock of a higher level among the secluded valleys y in the basins of torrents , and scattered profusely through the beds of clayi lie rich heaps of gold . In the latter it is " not only perceptible , but conspicuous . " And every day they find new beds , a golden store practically infinite . First , we had the fields near Bathurst , then Geelorig , after that Buninyong , later still Van Dieman ' s Land . Everywhere

      " Qrold , gold , gold , without end . ' * The yield of these treasuries of nature is something fabulous ; they surpass California in fertility . Eight square feet of «* dirt" is a fortune . Lucky men dig or wash £ 4 a day ; and there is an instance of one man who found £ 1500 worth in a week , another £ 1000 , and a very fortunate wight picked up £ 13 before breakfast ! exhibited in

      Of course the same phenomena are the labour market as were visible in Californiademand at a maximum , supply at a minimum . Shepherds leave their flocks to clip themselves ; seamen desert their ships , and are replaced by otnera taken from the common gaol ; carpenters , bricklayers , m asons , butchers , bakers , all manner 6 ^ akouRHfl ^ ipedSi ^ sh ^ rf ^<^ l ^^

      gold . A sea-captain writing from Melbourne , Oct . 3 , says : — "Nearly aUmy men are gone ; there is not a man to be had for loye Or money . I expect to be left alone with ray wife and a boy or two ; the ligh ' termen have all struck work ; it will be utterly impossible to get away at-all , if the present excitement continues . " What a picture ! It is only a sample of a very large stock on hand . And yet there is little or no emigration to Australia . Lord Grey , with abundant funds , and an unlimited number of persons desirous to emigrate , sits twiddling his thumbs , and will help none to depart . Starve in England , become paupers in

      England , breed candidates for Newgate in England , beg vigorously in England , but not one of you shall go to Australia—that is the practical gospel of Earl Grey . Now would it not be every way sound policy to ship off our acknowledged superfluity of unemployed labourers to these golden regionsthere to become productive , independent , wealthy citizens ? If there be now danger of the Australian population becoming demoralized by gold hunting , and debilitated by the gold fever , would it not be wise to keep pouring in such a supply of fresh , healthy population , as shall not only right the balance between supply and demand , but maintain the sound standard of moral health .

      Constant remunerative employment makes good citizens . Here it is in abundance . " Not only gold to dig , but flocks to tend . 'houses to build , provisions to be supplied , commerce to be carried on , ships to be navigated—every conceivable form of industry needful to the healthy development of a young colony- —all these are to be found there , the agricultural labourer who vegetates on seven shillings a week , the meagre mechanic , the wretched factory operative , the mm who live by their scanty wits—all whose employment is uncertain , and ' whose wages when employed are inadequate— -for all these there is a home in the Golden Isles of the Southern Seas .

      Untitled Article

      MARCH OF OPINION . Reaction carried to its extreme becomes the most " advanced " opinion . For instance , the Post supersedes us this week in freeing religion from cant and quackery . The special interposition of Providence in behalf of mortals scarcely to be considered " remarkable men , " is strongly rooted in the British mind ; and you would not expect , for instance , to find it gainsayed in th , e organ of fashionable intelligence . The Reverend Mr . Blood , one of the survivors of the Amazon , preached a sermon b y special request at St . Andrew ' s , Plymouth , on Sunday last , and in the pulpit of the edifice detailed his own experiences . He imputed his escape to the special interposition of Providence ; and the Post does justice on him—11 proof , as if one wore yet wanted , of tho truth , of Scripture—that the hairs of our head are all numbered , and that the Almighty holds the waters in tho hollow of his hand—this minister of the

      C * woh ~ i ) f ^ Engla ¥ d ^ aadueeclTiis own preservation and the destruction , of nearly two hundred of his fellow-creatures . Me was assisted by a special vision —a voice from Heaven said to him , * Go to bed early . Do not take off your clothes—not even your boots—do not go between the sheets—lie down on the outside of the bed , ' Even so minute were the directions of the guardian angel sent to this . good gentleman . He obeyed implicitly ;» nay , he even went , in his zeal for himself * beyond hiB instructions , for he went to sleep in hia spectacles . The voice was

      always at his elbow , labouring Iqi Mm , and pointing out the means available for his rescue , with a view to which solely the guardian angel had placed two breakers in the boat that received him , to enable the gallant sailors who were instruments of his safety to bale out the water that flowed rapidly in through the hole in the bottom . It does not seem to have occurred to this reverend gentleman that it would have been a much less roundabout way of doing the same thing , if his guardian angel had at once put the plug that fitted the hole in the boat -while he was about it . "

      Another contemporary excels us in sound Democratic views ; " There seems , then , no doubt that we really have a California of our own , if we have only the spirit to make good use of it . What a blessing if the idle fellows that hang on our parishes and beg in our streets—that choke up our charities aud harden our hearts—would take themselves off to a place where , with a very small amount of labour and skill , they might scrape up little fortunes ! . But as the example Of California has led to the discovery of the Australian deposits , who can tell how many more gold fields

      -We ^ hall ^ av ^^ ia-a ^ ew-yeaxsninViting the popula- " tion of this crowded , and , we may add , this groaning Europe , to seek new homqs through the length and breadth , of the globe—to found new institutions—and to enjoy that comfort and that liberty which is denied them by the monopolies and the tyrannies of the Old World . ? All things are double ' in Providence , and possibly that same gold which led the population of Europe id America in the first insianee may now be employed to counteract the * great triumph of ™ d < jspotism and the general collapse of popular institutions which mark this lamentable era . "

      Is not this passage good sound Leader ? Whence , then , do we take it ? " Temporamutantur , nos et nmtamur in illis . " The Times varies , and turns into ourselves . '' All things are double "—the Times and the lieader are twins . Large classes of the people practically adopt Socialism ; the entire public makes our patriotic appeal to national defences a common-place ; the Post invades our position in religious affairs ; the Times is the ultra-democratic journal—there is no keeping the lead of your thorough reactionists : they go back so fast , that one meets them at the Antipodes—and they have got there first I

      Untitled Article

      DEDICATED TO OUR FRIENDS IN FRANCE . Constitution de la Republique Franchise , l ' an de grace , 1852 : — Libert y , Egalitd , Fraternity . Les FraiKjaia ont la Liberte " , Mais la libert y . , . de ae taire ; Us ont aussi l'Egalitd , Mais devant la loi . . . militairc , Et quant u la Fraternity ; Je vous le dis en ve > it 6 , Us en goutent la voluptd Au oimetiere Oil cote a c 6 ta on lesenterre !—C .

      Untitled Article

      GLOSSARY OF NAPOLEONIC NEOLOQIBM 8 . Constitution—Prohibition of everything that is not abolished ; national decay . Convict- — -Any person that has convictions . Corps Legialatif— Legislative Corpse . Disauler— 'Eo say " Yea : " the word is applied to the pleadings of the Legislative Corpse . Formally it haa the alternative of saying " No ; " but the chance of such an accident has only a theoretical existence . Gratuitous—Open to a salary of JE 1200 . Justice , High Court of—A Judge and Jury Club '; ulang burlesque . It admits of no appeal . , Justice , Minister of—A Police Spy . A'Detootive . Libertd—There is no Knglish equivalent for this word .

      Proces verbal—The rooord in criminal proceedings and proeeodings of the Legislative Corpse . In the latter case it ia a remarkable improvement on the old oriminal process in presenting a record before tho offence ; as in oaso tho Legislative Corpse should say " No . " President ( from the Spanish )—Chief of a Presidio , or penal colony . France has recently become a penal homo colony .

      Republic— 'The private perquisite of the President . Universal Suffrage— -Strap oil ; pigeon ' s milk ; a hoax or practical joke on a large scale ; Amphytrionizing a nation ; " letting " a nation " into a line , " as Brummell said of his friend ' s tailor- ^ - " Who suffers ? "

      Untitled Article

      : "¦ •¦ . EXIT PARTY OP ORDER , A paragraph from the Ddbats l ends us a pleasant glimpse of an episode under the comfortable regime established , consensu populi , by the French Defender of the Faith , and Saviour of Society . France , at this rate will soon resemble the society which was entirely composed of Presidents and Vice-Presidents .. We have but a melancholy satisfaction in knowing that many of the proscribed of to-day -were the proscribers of yesterday . Of the Chiefs of that great" Party of Order " which fell tinder its own weight , it may at least be said that they " suffer where they sinned . "

      Poor gentlemen ! how harshly their monotonous tune of " Religion , Family , Property "—principles so long identified with M . Louis Bonaparte—must now sound in their ears . The Restorer of Religion drives them into a hopeless exile by a worse than Edict of Nantes ; tears them from their families , and " accords them a little time ( forty-eight hours , perhaps ) to settle their affairs . " " Some ( says the ' sadder and wiser' Dtbats ) are alienating their property , and others realising it ;"— . we are anxious to have explained the nice distinction between , " alienating" and " realising ;" -- " while others , again , are endeavouring to create for themselves a position in another country / ' What position are the exiles of the PartV Of Ordcr ~ to ^ " create forthemselves ^ -nntess ~ itr

      be positions in the police , as Protectors of Property par excellence ? But the unkindest cut of all is to come . " These gentlemen are to be conducted to the frontiers by police agents in coloured clothes" Is it " these gentlemen '' the police agents who are to appear on this occasion " in coloured clothes ? " And . what is to be the colour of the clothes ? Terrible is the vagueness ; terrible the familiarity of this announcement . What a latitude it allows to the caprices of theatrical tyranny bent upon making even the exit of its victims effective in point of costume . If , by a cruel derision , the clothes should be " red ! " or worse , parti-coloured , as befitting men who have served and sold so many Governments with a facility of perfidy only now excelled by one who has bettered his instructions . "

      Untitled Article

      ABOLITION " OF QUARANTINE . The report presented to the French National Academy of Medicine , on Dr . James Gillkrest ' s treatise , Is Yellow Fever Contagious or Not , is not only a high tribute to the skill and services of our fellow-countryman , the eminent Inspector-General of Army Hospitals ; it is also a more remarkable advance towards a sound and complete international Sanitary Reform than has yet been accomplished . It is a scientific recognition by such men as Majendie of the absolute inutility of Quarantine—that obsolete tradition of barbarism and ignorance , which ,

      even in these days of steam and electric telegraphs , is an " institution " few have had the oourage to assail . A sort of bigotry , mingled with contempt , has protected from innovation what has long been considered by science as a great folly , and by all travellers a nuisance . Dr . Gillkrest will have done more to quioken . the circulation of international life than any Peace Congress extant . And we need not appeal to the reminiscences of Eastern travellers for gratitude to the man who will be hereafter

      known as the Destroyer of those Sanitary Bastillesknown by the name of Lazarettoa . The misery of forty days in a Lazaretto is , after all , ill repaid by a ludicrous description of the tortures in a traveller ' s Notebook Another reflection occurs to us ; it Ib , that Sanitary discipline and Quarantine regulations have been too often abused by petty powers for the purposes of poli t ical exclusion and hostility , especially by snarling despotisms like Naples , which can only bark , not bite .

      Untitled Article

      Jak . 1852 J Cfr * Q , 1 * p * t . 85

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      Forest Trees . —In contemplating the length of life of one of the reverend and hoary elders of the forest , we are apt to forget that it is not to be measured by the standard of man or of tho higher animals ; for it . is really not the measure of an individual existence , but , as it wore , of tho duration of an empire or nation , A tree is a populous , community , presided over by an oligarchy , of which the

      flowera are the aristooracy , and the leaves the working claesoa . Tho life of tho individual members of the commonwealth is brief enough ^ but the state of which they are members , has often a vast duration ; and some of those whose agos wo have referred to , could they take cognisance of human affairs , would look with contempt upon tho instability and irregularity of human governments and states , as compared with the unchanging order and security of their own . —Professor Forbes , m Art Journal ,

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 24, 1852, page 85, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1919/page/17/