each of whom would spend something like £1 in this way during the day. The publicans thus drive a great trade, and will naturally do what they can to maintain and promote the practice. In fact, where business transactions are concerned, they can practically make it imperative. My companion above-mentioned was a manufacturer of lemonade, &c., and he explained that when he came to the neighbouring town on business he had no choice but to patronise the principal inn, where in the course of an hour he would drop some £3 in this unsatisfactory way. All this must mend in time.
The question necessarily forces itself on you, What will be the effect on our race, say thirty or fifty years hence, of this new climate and new surroundings? Some people tell you they already notice a decline of energy. That there will be a change, in so far as climate has to do with national character, is inevitable, for certainly our climate and the Australian are widely diverse. We probably owe much to our climate. Its uncertainty stimulates ingenuity and resource – witness the Scotch farmer and gardener; its severity hardens our frames and disposes to activity; its gloom, the Frenchman says, tends to suicide, or, as we might retort, encourages certain reflective qualities in which he is deficient. One would fain hope that the energies thus developed have become inherent in the race. Besides, there are varieties of climate in Australia. If the maritime belt from Sydney northwards is enervating, the dry atmosphere of the southern colonies is distinctly invigorating, as are also, it is said, even the torrid plains of the interior. We must therefore look to intercourse with these bracing regions, and with the stream of immigration from home, to counteract enervating tendencies. But any fine climate, as against a bad one, tends directly not only to ease but to amusement; and if the rising generation have the energy of their fathers, a point on which many doubt, it is, by all accounts, chiefly in this latter direction that they expend it. The sons of the men who have created their position and fortunes too often decline to follow in their fathers' footsteps. A more curious fact, and difficult to explain, is the small demand for commissions in the army which the home authorities have placed at the disposal of these young colonials. To an outsider it seems also a matter for regret that some of them do not go into serious training for public and parliamentary life. It is often made a reproach to the constituencies that they seldom elect men of culture and independence. But do they always have the chance?
I have often been asked, both by themselves and by others, whether the Australians "blow." They have probably no special need to use the prayer, "Lord gie us a gude conceit o' ourselves." It would be rather a misfortune, in their position, if they had; but if a young and vigorous community, rapidly expanding, and daily developing fresh outlets for its enterprise and wealth – if such a community did not blow a little it would be more or less than human; and there has been hitherto another exciting cause for so doing – viz., the sense that their importance was not duly appreciated at home. Now, if there is a recognised excuse for blowing your own trumpet, it is that no one will blow it for you. Admitting, then, that
