It is certainly true that, with respect to many articles, these imports have been in excess of the requirements of the colony. Its markets have been drugged with Manchester goods, with hardware, and slops, or “haberdashery,” as our parliamentary returns rather absurdly call hats, shoes, boots, ready-made clothing, &c. Serious losses will have to be encountered by those parties who are unable to hold over their consignments, and in part from the want of storage-room. But this state of things is merely temporary, and applies to articles which are not strictly necessaries. The arrival of the overland mail, with dates to the end of May, brings us the assurance that business is improving, as indeed might have been expected in a country whose population increases at the rate of a thousand persons a week, each of whom is, on landing upon its shores, placed at once in possession of an income never previously enjoyed. We have the material fact, too, before us, establishing the capability of the Australian colonist to consume largely the products of foreign industry, that during the past year the province of Victoria exported to the amount of £11,061,543, of which £8,644,529 was gold, and £1,651,543 was wool. The difference between the amount of imports and exports may be accounted for without concluding that the population has been running itself into debt beyond their means of paying it with tolerable promptitude. We may reasonably hope, too, that one of the causes of such excessive importations as those of last year will shortly be removed. We have had thus far no efficient and regular mail communication with the colony. Up to the 20th of July, our latest advices from Melbourne were dated the 25th of March; and it was to American enterprise that we were indebted for intelligence up to May 11, brought by the steamer “Golden Age” to Panama, and thence by the West India Company’s boats to Southampton. Close upon four months had thus elapsed, during which our merchants had been operating in the dark, making shipments to a colony the consuming powers of which had not been fairly tested, and which might, for anything we knew, have supplied its wants from the nearer markets of India and China, or taken a portion of the surplus shipments to California. It is clear that such has been the case. We have shown above, that of the total imports into Victoria in 1853, £5,036,311 were derived from “other British colonies,” and £1,668,606 from the United States of America. Our East Indian markets, no doubt, supplied the former amount, and the bulk of the latter crossed the Pacific from California. On the 27th July we had a regular mail by the overland route, _via_ India and the Mediterranean, bringing advices up to the 29th May, which confirmed those brought by the “Golden Age.” It is clear that a country, which takes from the United Kingdom upwards of fourteen millions sterling per annum, ought to have permanently