CHAP. XI - CONFEDERATION

Summary

Melbourne is unusually gay, for at a shapely palace in the centre of the city the second great Intercolonial Exhibition is being held, and, as its last days are drawing to their close, fifty thousand people—a great number for the colonies—visit the building every week. There are exhibitors from each of our seven southern colonies, and from French New Caledonia, Netherlandish India, and the Mauritius. It is strange to remember now that in the colonization both of New Zealand and of Australia, we were the successful rivals of the French only after having been behind them in awakening to the advisability of an occupation of those countries. In the case of New Zealand, the French fleet was anticipated three several times by the forethought and decision of our naval officers on the station and in the case of Australia, the whole south coast was actually named “La Terre Napoléon,” and surveyed for colonization by Captain Baudin in 1800. New Caledonia, on the other hand, was named and occupied by ourselves, and afterwards abandoned to the French.

The present remarkable exhibition of the products of the Australian coming just at the time when the border customs between Victoria and New South Wales have been abolished by agreement, and when all seems to point to the formation of a customs union between the colonies, leads men to look still further forward, and to expect confederation.