We entertain little doubt that, in a short while, the provincial legislatures and people of the various provinces of Australia will protest loudly against this mismanagement of their contributions for the purpose of encouraging emigration, and assert the right of exercising a greater control than they have at present over their own funds. But it is, after all, to the honest press, and to the enterprise of private individuals, that these important colonies must look chiefly for a relief from their present temporary difficulties. A large amount of misconception has been spread abroad as to the prospects which they hold out for settlers and their social condition. We have had too much information from the Colonies themselves about the state of trade in Melbourne and the other large towns, and the yield of the various gold mines, and much too little of the progress making in agricultural pursuits. With respect to the latter, too, the sort of information conveyed, and the picture which it presents, have not been of a character likely to attract the most useful classes of settlers—our small farmers and farm-labourers. Sheep-farming and stock-farming in “the bush,” as it is still absurdly termed, is naturally associated in their minds with ideas of solitary and half-savage life, to adventure upon which most men, and especially those who have been accustomed to quiet domestic life, and have no pressing necessity for taking such a step, will hardly be induced to leave their native land. In the large towns society is gradually assuming a settled character, and their population, the old and the newly arrived as well, are directing their attention to the ordinary avocations of industry. Dwellings, as we have shown, are being erected almost with sufficient rapidity to meet the demand for them, and proper sanitary and other arrangements will follow. The most congratulatory movement which has recently, and is now more rapidly than ever taking place, is the conversion of the soil, hitherto in a wild state, or forming portions of sheep-runs, into farms of various sizes, cultivated in the best manner by British and other farmers. Little communities, the germs of future towns and villages, are springing up on every side; and before many seasons are over, the population, however largely augmented, will have no occasion to depend upon extraneous supply for any of the leading necessaries of life. Whether as a merchant, a tradesman, or to engage in other legitimate and useful occupations, the emigrant may now safely leave his home to settle for life in Australia in the entire confidence that his industry will meet its full reward. To bring about the future greatness which we have predicted for the colony, as the centre of a wealthy and powerful Anglo-Saxon empire in the Pacific, whose population are governed by British laws, and are in the enjoyment of British institutions, it is most important that the British element should be as largely as possible