We should look, however, to the number and character of the Australian population. In 1828 the total colonial population of Australia was 53,000, of whom a large proportion were convicts. In 1848 it was 300,000, of which the convicts were but 6000. In the two years since, 37,000 emigrants have proceeded thither, and the total population at this moment can not be less than 350,000. It has, therefore, been multiplied in twenty-two years' time by near seven-fold; and if it should go on at this rate of increase, in the year 1872 it will amount to close on two millions and a half, which is a greater population than that of the old American colonies at the declaration of independence, and after an existence of 175 years. Such a population, or the one half of it, would, from numbers, position, and resources, be unconquerable. Such is a true picture, we conceive, of the position in which we stand in relation to our Australian colonies. Meanwhile, the colonists are loyal, affectionate, and devoted, and (the result of absence and distance) with really warmer feelings toward the mother country than those they left behind them. It will be the part of wisdom on our side to keep them in this temper. They demand nothing that is unreasonable--nothing that it is not equally for their advantage and ours that we should promptly and freely concede. They ask for responsible government, and doing so they ask for no more than what is possessed by their fellow-citizens. They ought to have perfect power over their own resources and their own expenditure; but, in justice and fairness, they ought also to defray their own military charges; and, seeing they have neither within nor without any enemy that can cope with a company of light infantry, the cost ought not to be oppressive to them. The Australian colonies are, at present, governed in a fashion to produce discontent and recalcitration. They are, consequently, both troublesome and expensive. The nation absolutely gains nothing by them that it would not gain, and even in a higher degree, were they self-governed, or, for that matter, were they even independent. Thus, emigration to them would go on at least in the same degree as it does now. It does so go on, to the self-governed colony of Canada, and to the country which was once colonies, and this after a virtual separation of three quarters of a century.