My publisher affords me just time to record my arrival yesterday, at the
capital of the youthful but already great Queensland, and to give some
opinions of the place after a glance, which is, however, of necessity so
cursory.
Brisbane is to me not less astonishing than either Sydney or Melbourne.
From the adjacent heights of Mount Coot-tha, I looked over several
square miles, mostly of thickly compacted streets and dwellings,
comprising a town and connected suburbs of 75,000 busy people. While the
suburban houses are chiefly of wood, the town proper already, in some
respects, fairly rivals its senior sisters of the South. Thus
Queen-street, in its general architectural aspect, and in the tide of
business life which it presents, is but little short of the chief
streets of these other cities; while the structures of two of the
Queensland Banks, the Queensland National and the London Chartered of
Australia, together with those of the Australian Mutual Provident
Society and of the stores of Messrs. D.L. Brown and Co., Messrs. Stewart
and Hemmant, and Messrs. Scott, Dawson and Stewart, seemed to me quite
equal to anything of the kind, respectively, which I had met with since
my arrival. Indeed, I am prepared to congratulate my friend, Mr. Drury,
at the head of the former of these banks, upon an edifice which, in
graces of structure, as well as in mere dimensions, seems to me to
surpass all rivalry.
The Bank of England--the highly conservative "old lady of
Threadneedle-street"--on the recent occasion of negotiating yet one more
large Queensland loan, broadly hinted to her go-ahead client that her
borrowing must, for a time at least, be more restricted. I do not deny
the wisdom of this advice, for truly all Australasian borrowing has been
utterly outside of all principle and precedent. But while the Home
public is preoccupied with these colonies' great debts, my visit here
has diverted the leading idea rather to the solid and expansive basis of
trade and prosperity which I see around me. I have not yet seen South
Australia or New Zealand, but, from what already reaches my ears, I have
no reason to expect that my account of either colony is to differ
materially, if at all, from that of the others. The ready facility to
incur debt on behalf of colonial progress is due, as it seems to me,
rather to consciousness of strength than to indifference about financial
obligation. Each colony will "pay" with equal certainty and promptitude,
although a New South Wales or a Victoria may do so with less strain than
their sisters.