The Queenslanders have not yet solved the problem of the settlement of a tropical country by Englishmen, and of its cultivation by English hands. The future, not of Queensland merely, but of Mexico, of Ceylon, of every tropical country, of our race, of free government itself, are all at stake; but the success of the experiment that has been tried between Brisbane and Rockampton has not been great. The colony, indeed, has prospered much, quadrupling its population and trebling its exports and revenue in six years, but it is the Darling Downs, and other table-land sheep countries, or, on the other hand, the Northern gold fields, which are the main cause of the prosperity; and in the sugar and cotton culture of the coast, colored labor is now almost exclusively employed, with the usual effect of degrading field-work in the eyes of European settlers, and of forcing upon the country a form of society of the aristocratic type. It is possible that just as New England has of late forbidden to Louisiana the importation of Chinamen to work her sugar fields, just as the Kansas radicals have declared that they will not recognize the Bombay Hammal as a brother, just as the Victorians have refused to allow the further reception of convicts by West Australia, separated from their territories by 1000 miles of desert, so the New South Welsh and Victorians combined may at least protest against the introduction of a mixed multitude of Bengalees, Chinamen, South Sea Islanders, and Malays, to cultivate the Queensland coast plantations. If, however, the other colonies permit their Northern sister to continue in her course of importing dark-skinned laborers, to form a peon population, a few years will see her a wealthy cotton and sugar-growing country, with all the vices of a slaveholding government, though without the name of slavery. The planters of the coast and villages, united with the squatters of the table-lands or “Downs,” will govern Queensland, and render union with the free colonies impossible, unless great gold discoveries take place, and save the country to Australia.