cessful miner will have an opportunity of investing his capital safely and profitably.
These remarks lead us to the investigation of the capabilities of the soil, as well as the products of those rich mines of which we speak. For, such is the bountiful nature of the climate of "Australia Felix," that there is no period of the year, of many weeks' duration, in which some crop might not be forwarded. But the great differential fact between cultivated and unreclaimed lands, as property, is this,—that the former acquire a settled value, liable to but small fluctuations; while the first breath of panic converts the latter into its original insignificance, and, by sweeping away all the artificial value that had been imparted to it for a season, leaves the unfortunate owner almost without the means of raising a pound on his acres. We contend that land of such fertility as exists in this colony is far before even our gold produce as an ultimate means of individual wealth; whilst as a means of national progress, it is immeasurably before the precious metal. We may expose the absurdity of our present method of dealing with this great treasure, by instancing a people who may produce some important staple article of commerce—raw cotton, for example, but who, in place of selling it for export and manufacture, should make it the medium of speculation amongst themselves—of sale and re-sale, until it attained a price which shut it out from sale for manufacturing purposes, and at the same time left it perfectly use-
