Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne and Victoria | Page 4

movement was just beginning to look serious to those outside of us, a leading Paris paper devoted an article to the subject, remarking that if Great Britain persevered so as to unite her empire as sought, the balance of the world's power would be so seriously disturbed as to call for an international reconsideration of that subject.
The progress as yet has been chiefly negative, but it has been great. Modes entertained at first have been discarded. This may be said of superseding the present Imperial Parliament by a pro re nata Federal Assembly; and it may be equally said of an influx of proportionate colonial representatives into the Home House. Councils of colonial ambassadors, agents-general, and so on, have, I think, definitely gone the same way. These are chiefly Home views, for Home is at length aroused as well as the colonies to their common question; and the summons by the Secretary for the Colonies of the Colonial Conference which sat in London two years ago marks alike the most prominent and most promising feature in the movement.
Mr. Froude has given, most usefully, the views of the colonists. Let us take Mr. Dalley's, which is also that of most others, namely, that the nascent but increasing colonial navies should be all under one imperial command--that is, be a part of the British navy. There is one more step--namely, to dispose of all colonial military force in the same common-sense way, and then we have a politically united empire. But we are "constitutional" or representative in our polity, so that something else is still wanted. In short, the unity of the empire requires two things. First, that all its force be under one executive, and, next, that the colonies be proportionately represented in that executive. The Cabinet seems to me the adaptable body we can operate upon to this end. That body would then be actually, as well as legally, the empire's executive. Nothing should--nothing need--prevent the attainment of this grand end. The tariff bugbear concerns only commerce, and need not arrest nor even interfere with the empire's political unity. All other matters of the common interest can be leisurely settled by mutual consent, as the empire, in its united state, sails along the great ocean of the future. The mother will then, in emergency, have the sure call of her children; while every colony, even to the very smallest, will know that in case of need the whole empire is at its back. When the rest of the world knows that fact, it will thenceforth probably not trouble our empire either about international rearrangements or anything else.
EARLY PORT PHILLIP.
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot And the days o' lang syne." --Burns.
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder." --Haynes Bayly.
Entering Port Phillip on the morning of the 13th December, 1840, we were wafted quickly up to the anchorage of Hobson's Bay on the wings of a strong southerly breeze, whose cool, and even cold, temperature was to most of us an unexpected enjoyment in the middle of an Australian summer. A small boat came to us at the anchorage containing Mr. and Mrs. D.C. McArthur and others who had friends or relations on board, and who told us that for some days there had been excessive heat and a hot wind, which had now reacted in this southerly blast, to go on probably into heavy rain, the country being excessively dry.
MY FIRST NIGHT ASHORE.
"The Hut on the Flat." --James Henry.
"How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude." --Cowper.
The rain did follow at night to the full as predicted. I had engaged to accompany a young friend that evening to spend the next day, Sunday, at his "country seat" on Richmond Flat, where he had constructed, mostly with his own hands, a sort of hut or wigwam, under an unchallenged squattage. Being engaged in a store for long hours on Saturday night, it was past eleven ere we started. The rain had begun to pour, and the night was pitch dark. We got into Collins-street, but had much difficulty in keeping its lines where there were not post-and-rail fences round the vacant allotments. Only three years had elapsed since Melbourne had been named and officially laid out, and, excepting the very centre, there were still wide intervals between the houses on either side even of Collins-street. After floundering helplessly about in the foundation-cutting of a new house, which was already full of water, but happily only a few inches deep, we at length emerged upon the open of the present Fitzroy Gardens, where for a little time we could keep to the bush track only by trying the ground with our feet or our fingers. But in spite of all care we soon lost the road, and wandered about in the pouring rain for the