I do not believe that in all the world, the United States of America not excepted, any community has ever progressed with a swiftness and expansion so phenomenal as has the colony which Her Gracious Majesty permitted to take her own name when she granted it a separate existence in November 1850. It had been but fifteen years earlier that the first settlers--the brothers Henty, one of whom died only a few years ago--came across Bass Straits from Van Diemen’s Land in their little _Thistle_. In 1837 the town of Melbourne was laid out, and one hundred allotments were then sold on what are now the principal streets. The aggregate sum which the hundred allotments fetched was £3410. Two summers ago the same allotments were carefully valued by experts, and it was calculated that, exclusive of the buildings erected on them, they could now be sold for nineteen and a half million pounds. This stupendous increment has accrued in half a century, but in effect the appreciation has almost wholly occurred during the last thirty-five years. Before 1851, when the gold discoveries were made, Victoria prospered in an easy gentle fashion. Its scanty population, outside its two petty towns, were wholly engaged in stock-raising; almost its sole exports were wool, hides, and tallow. The gold-find upset as by a whirlwind the lazy, primitive social system of the bucolic era. From all the ends of the earth, gentle and simple, honest man and knave, hurried swarming and jostling to the new El Dorado. Mr. Ruxton, one of the Colonial historians, omits to particularise the reputable elements of the immigration deluge, but in his caricatured Macaulay-ese, he zealously catalogues the detrimental and dangerous accessions. “From California,” he writes, “came wild men, the waifs of societies which had submitted to or practised lynch law. The social festers of France, Italy, and Germany shed exfoliations upon Australia. The rebellious element of Ireland was there. The disappointed crew who thought to frighten the British Isles from their propriety in 1848 were represented in some strength. The convict element of Australia completed the vile ingredients.” And yet it was wonderful how small was the actual crime of a serious character, when the utter disintegration of restraining institutions is taken into consideration. In January 1852, when daily shiploads of gold-mad immigrants were being thrown into Melbourne, only two of the city constables remained at their duty. The chief constable himself had to go on a beat. In the country the rural police to a man had forsaken their functions and made haste to the diggings. In the first rush the capital was all but depopulated of its manhood; there remained behind but the women and children, who had to shift for themselves. An advance of 50 per cent of salary did not avail to retain at their desks the officials in the public offices. Servants had gone. Gentlemen and ladies had to carry water