Letters from Australia Book Reviews

Letters from Australia by John Martineau Book Summary

The following Letters were most of them written in Australia in 1867, and were published in theSpectator in the course of that and the following year. Some are reprinted without alteration, others have been added to and altered, and others are new.
No attempt has been made to mould them into a continuous or complete account either of the past history or present condition of the three colonies which they endeavour to describe. Those of the colonies which are old enough to possess a history have had it already written. And as for their present state, it would be presumptuous to suppose that fifteen months divided between them could have sufficed to enable me, circumstanced as I was, to give anything like a complete account of countries so large, or to obtain an accurate understanding of all the various political questions and phenomena presented by them. The organisation of school education, for instance, for which I am told some of the Australian legislatures deserve credit, was a matter that did not come under my notice, and important as this question is now becoming, I am unable to import any evidence bearing upon it.
In the absence of any exciting personal adventures there was no excuse for writing a diary or personal narrative. I was not even stopped by bushrangers; though had I wished it, and made my wishes known, ‘Thunderbolt’ would doubtless have been delighted to ‘stick up’ the Scone and Singleton Mail the day I was in it, instead of two or three days later, and again about a fortnight afterwards.
But a single day, a single hour spent in a new-world colony dissipates many delusions, and conveys many facts and ideas and impressions of it, which no amount of reading or of second-hand information can altogether supply, and which ought to confer the power of presenting a more vivid and real picture than a mere compiler at a distance can give.
These letters are therefore published, fragmentary as they are, for what they are worth. They aim at being accurate as far as they go, even at the expense of being in the last degree dull.
I am afraid we English are indolent and apathetic upon political questions, however important, unless there is the amusement and relish of party-spirit or religious excitement to make them palatable. Hitherto the want of interest taken by England in her colonies has been as remarkable as it is unfortunate. Even the discovery of gold, and all the strange and interesting scenes and events which it produced, dispelled this want of interest only for a time. But some day or other, it is to be hoped, we shall wake up to the significance of the fact that tens of thousands of able-bodied paupers are being supported in idleness, whilesome at least of the colonies are, under certain conditions, offering free passages to those who will go to them. If we think about this fact and its surrounding circumstances, we may reflect that to ignore such questions for the sake of discussing a ‘free breakfast-table,’ or even an alteration of the franchise, is rather like fiddling while Rome is burning.

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