Transcribed by Susan Bergeron. Geo. Carlisle Journal Friday, December 8th, 1899 Australasia Outside India the path of Empire building has been more peaceful. COOK, a captain in the navy, but immortal as an explorer rather than a fighter, was the effectual discoverer of Australia; both his achievements and his character make him a worthy founder of a new continent. After COOK rank the crews of the whalers who sailed the Southern Seas; they made no settlements, but their maritime enterprise gave England an interest that naturally let to colonisation. Far less worthy and altogether a pathetic class of men to have been the builders of a new nation were the convicts sent to the penal settlement at Botany Bay. DARWIN urged that there was something to be said for the system; the descendants of the convicts had grown up in their new surroundings into respectable men. Certainly many of the men transported were convicted for slight offences, but the system cannot really be defended. The non-criminal settlers found it intolerable, and the Home Government were compelled to abolish it, though not without a struggle. It is curious that we should have learnt so little wisdom in long years; the first colonial expedition that set out under FROBISHER took criminals and failed utterly; BACON warned his countrymen of the cost of trying to form plantations of the scum of the population; yet we persisted in the attempt and only gave it up not from wisdom but because we were forced to do so by Australian opinion. If colonisation is allowed to follow its natural course, the most energetic and fittest find their way out; when a Government steps in to send out failures it simply sacrifices the new country for no material benefit to the old. Australia was saved from this fate by the influx of immigrants who have swamped the old convict element, which is now only a stain which Australia resents but which does not materially affect her population. Beyond the import of convicts there was at the beginning of this century no organised system of emigration to the colonies, as there had been in the days of the companies who colonised North America. The results were unsatisfactory. England after that great war with NAPOLEON was full of distress and misery, wages were low, food dear, and the condition of the labouring classes was made worse by the old Poor Law. In Australia there was a lack of labour, except that of convicts; the population was scattered, as land was granted free and settlers established themselves where they pleased; there was little capital and no co-operation. WAKEFIELD, a man of great ability though of rather undisciplined character, who had taken up the colonial question, saw the evils of haphazard colonisation, for which he proposed a remedy that was to consist in making colonisation more complete; the settlers were to be collected in groups, the free grant of land was to be forbidden, so that the immigrant might begin as a labourer, and in order that the purchase money might form an immigration fund to bring fresh settlers. By his efforts he succeeded in persuading a knot of distinguished men, such as CHARLES BULLER, MOLESWORTH, and GROTE, to join him; to carry out their projects an association was formed in 1837 for the colonisation of New Zealand. The association met two obstacles: the home Government were reluctant to extend its responsibilities, and the missionaries objected because the arrival of white men would interfere with their relations with the natives. These obstacles were disregarded, the expedition sailed without leave, forcing the hand of the Home Government, who annexed New Zealand only just in time to save it from annexation by the French. WAKEFIELD may justly be considered the founder of New Zealand, and not only of New Zealand, for by his writings he founded a Colonial school of thought on the right lines which has done immense service to both the Colonies and the Mother Country. .....