The PREMIER (Hon. W. Kidston), in rising to ask His Excellency to dedicate Government House to the purposes of the University, said: Your Excellency and Ladies and Gentlemen,--To-day Queensland completes her first half-century as a self-governing community; and we are met to honour the occasion--to erect a white stone, as it were, to mark this point in our national progress. Fifty years ago a handful of settlers, not quite 24,000 in number, claimed and obtained the right to manage their own affairs; and the British Government, in granting that right, virtually handed over to those few pioneers the ownership of this vast territory now called Queensland--a territory exceeding in area the combined areas of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, and Italy. If we consider how few they were and the way in which they undertook the work of opening up and civilising this vast territory, we must recognise that our first pioneers were men of enterprise, of self-reliance, and of high courage. (Hear, hear.) Although our population has increased twenty-four times since then, we are still but a handful in this vast land. When we try to compare the Queensland of to-day with the Queensland of fifty years ago--the cities and towns that have been built where then was the untrodden bush; the thousands of miles of railways and the many thousands of miles of roads, like a network all over this great area; the rivers that have been spanned by bridges; the harbours that have been made; the endless miles of telegraph lines that give rapid communication between the townships scattered all over the State--all the things that go to mark a civilised people--when we consider to what extent that work has been carried out by such a mere handful of people, we may well commend the men who have preceded us. (Hear, hear.) And it was not only in the matter of material development that these men did good work. Many years ago they established an educational system which still obtains--a system so effective and comprehensive that all over this vast territory of Queensland wherever ten or a dozen children can be brought together there you will find a State school. (Hear, hear.) And even beyond that, by means of the itinerant teachers, the scattered children of the bush are sought out and have at least the rudiments of education brought to their isolated homes. (Hear, hear.) To-day we seek to commemorate our establishment as a self-governing community, and at the same time to show our appreciation of the excellent work done by our predecessors in opening up this new land and in promoting the civilising and humanising agencies that have made Queensland what she is; and I hold that we can show our appreciation of the good work our predecessors did in no better way than by imitating and continuing that good work. We who have eaten of the fruit of the trees which our predecessors planted; we, the men of to-day, may also seek to plant so that the children of to-morrow may