We have certainly little hope of our Government doing much to develop the resources of Australia. The Post-Office authorities may, indeed, be induced to concede to the colony, and to the mercantile community of this country, a direct mail communication _via_ Panama, by the prospect—indeed, almost certainty—that if they fail in the performance of their duty, the United States Government will do it for them. The experiment made by the American steam-ship “Golden Age” is said to have been, commercially, an unprofitable one. But the application of steam power to the performance of long voyages is even as yet in its infancy. The chief difficulty hitherto experienced in making short and regular passages to a distant port has been the large quantity of coals required to be carried, which diminishes the power of carrying cargo in our mail steamers. It is estimated that our Cunard Company’s and the Collins’ boats would have to diminish their speed, and to forfeit some of their character for regularity in the transmission of mails to and from America, were the two countries a thousand miles farther apart. But at the present time an improvement is making in the machinery of one of the boats of the latter Company by her owners in the United States, which, it is stated, is likely to economise very materially her consumption of fuel, the saving by which may either be applied to increasing her speed or her carrying capabilities. The same improvement can be adopted in our Australian steamers. But from the Colonial Office we expect literally nothing. The treatment of Australia by that Office has been, from first to last, most neglectful; and even since the gold discoveries, and the recognition by all thinking men of the vast importance which the colony has assumed as a feeder of the commerce of England, our statesmen have appeared incapable of appreciating its claims to their consideration. A glaring instance of this perverse or ignorant blindness has recently occurred in the filling up of the office of Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia. The first party appointed was Mr Stonor, an Irish member, of no great mark in Parliament or elsewhere. This gentleman duly sailed for the colony, but was shortly after his departure unseated for bribery. Such was the grossness of the charges against him, brought to light by a parliamentary inquiry, that the Colonial Office were compelled to despatch his recall. Another Lieutenant-Governor was to be appointed; and the choice fell upon the Hon. F. Lawley, M.P. for Beverley. Mr Lawley’s claims to hold an appointment, so important at the present crisis in a country which eminently requires the supervising of a practical statesman, experienced in the management of colonial affairs, are not easy to discover. He was a young man—young at least in public life—twenty-eight years of age; had passed rather a distinguished course at the university, and had held for a few months the situation of private secretary to the