THE JEOPARDY OF SOUTII AUSTRALIA.

[During the considerable time tint has elapsed since we last paid attention to South Australia in the Spectator, the colony hes been placed in a dangerous position, through the mismanagement of its civil government. The preent Governor, Colonel GAWLE11, was sent out with instructions limiting his yearly expenditure to 12,000/. ; with an extraordinary credit, in case of unforeseen emergencies, of 5,000/. Colonel Gawr.En has neglected those instructions: he has launched into a variety of local " improvements," and indulged in a general profusion of the most extravagant kind; to such an extent, that, in place of 12,0001., he has been spending, latterly, at the rate of 200,000/. in one year. By the last accounts, he W as building a government-house vying in magnificence trithlhe government-residences of the oldest colonies. A stream or bills has consequently been poured in upon the Colonization Commissioners in London, which they had not the means of meeting. At first those bills were paid, at the expense of the fund accruing from the sales of land—which ought to be devoted to purposes of emigration ; and the Commissioners were even betruved into infringing, or at least stretching, the terms of the act of Parliament. By the supplementary South Australian Act, It is permitted to borrow from the land-fund, for the use of the civil service ; but the sum so borrowed must not exceed one-third of the year's receipts on account of the sale of land. The Commissioners, however, have placed the civil ser- vice in debt to the emigration-fund by no less an amount than 00,0001.; a sum, it is conceived, greatly exceeding the proportion allowed by law. A necessary consequence of thus misappropriating the land-fund, was a total stoppage in that supply of labour, hitherto uninterrupted, upon which the colony depends: no emigrant-ship was sent out in Se1itemb21' ; none this month ; and there is no announcement of any for next month. And even that illegitimate resource proved unequal to the demand upon it. In the mean time, the Commissioners endeavoured to negotiate a loan in the City ; but their invitation to the moneyed world was not answered by a single tender. At length they were obliged to refuse payment of the unbroken string of bills. The civil service being thus declared insolvent, and the einigration-fund having been involved in the same insolvency, the Commissioners adopted the on course which was left open to them, mid threw the whole matter up,m Home Government ; under whuse consideration it still remains. The South Australian public in London have been greatly alarmed : they have held several meetings upon the subject, and Wive made strong representations to the Home Government as to the necessity anti justice of relieving the colony, and the large interests involved, from the embarrassment brought upon it by the nieces! met of an °nicer of the Government, beyond their control. This recapitulation was necessary to the full understanding, of the following paper, which appeared in last Wednesday's Cohtnia/ Goactte, being one of a series.] Harm; pointed out the remoter dangers to which South Australia is exposed by the apparent madness oh' Governor CRAWLER, We pro- ceed to notice others of more pressing urgency, which indeed threaten the very existence of the colony.

It is supposed that Governor Gawi.na's bills will amount, before his reckless expenditure can be stopped, to at least 200,000/. ; and as the Commissioners are without fluids to meet this dein;md on their exchequer, the whole of the bills will probably be returned dishonoured. The immediate consequences are sufficiently obvious. In the first place, front the moment when a dishonoured Govern- ment bill shall appear in the colony, it will be impossible to raise another shilling fig public expenditure of any kind or degree.

Governor GAwLau may draw away, but nobody will take his paper. It follows that the payment (eleven salaries will be stopped, toge- ther with the surveys and other public works of necessity. All government, therefore, must suddenly conic to an end. Not only •

the surveyors, but the police and officers of' justice will be unpaid; and the Governor himself will be dependent on charity for the

very means of subsistence. Nor is the stoppage of the functions of government the only evil that must result from non-payment of salaries : Governor GAWLER'S extravagance has created, as it were, a large body of public servants, who will be thrown out of employ- ment without notice, and therefore out of bread.

Secondly—We have said out of bread as well as employment, because it is impossible that those who will have lived on Govern- ment pay should procure employment in an infant community of

15,000 souls suddenly oppressed by a debt of 200,000/. For let it be observed, that the Governor's bills w ill have been passed to the

settlers, who again will have passed them into the neighbouring colonies in payment for live-stock and food ; and that when they are returnca dishonoured, each of them will reach the person who accepted it as money from the Government, in the shape of a pressing debt. The greater the number of hands through which these hills shall have passed in the colony, the more extensive will be the mischief; since every one who may have held a bill will be called upon to pay its amount as a debtor, and will as a creditor press on his neighbour or the Government—but equally in vain. In such circumstences private credit will be at an end, like the credit and the functions of the Government. And further, while the public expenditure of 200,000/. in one year will have occa- sioned an extensive dependence on public employment, the issue of Government bills to that amount will have called into existence an excessive amount of currency, which must be suddenly depre- ciated when its foundation is taken away. A large proportion of the Governi»ent bills will doubtless have been discounted by the local banks, whose notes will be hastily returned to them in de- tunnel for specie when it shall be known that the public paper is

valueless. We cannot see how either of the bauks should avoid a suspension of' cash payments. Li that case, their notes will be

without value, and the colony will necessarily be drained of what specie it may contain ; for no other money will pay debts or buy food in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. The com- munity, therefore, will be not only without government and with- cut private credit, but also without a currency.

Thirdly—South Australia, though now abundantly supplied with tine-woolled sheep, (the number being estimated at 150,0000 does

not yet raise a quarter of the bread-stuff required by its inha- bitants. Agriculture was rapidly advancing by the last accounts, but the col any was still an extensive importer of flour and rice. The imports of food must cease when credit and currency fail, ex- cepting only the small quantity that the colony may be able to purchase with specie. Famine, consequently, among all classes, from the meanest labourer to the Governor himself, seems almost inevitable. We wish that we could be justly accused of exaggera- tion in saying that thousands of the colonists may be starved to death.

Such an extent of disorganization and calamity as we have de- picted under these three .divieions is not readily suggested to the mind by experience only. In order to estimate it by analogy we must exert our imaginations, and suppose a town population sud- denly deprived of all government and of all credit and all currency at the same time. What would happen in such a case ? It is plain that, unless there were help from without, the whole population would soon die of hunger. South Australia differs front a town only in this as respects the present subject—that it produces some of the food required to support its inhabitants. And therefore a total stoppage of credit and currency will not destroy all the people; but as it is not in the power of this or any other commu- nity instantly at pleasure to increase its production of food, so surely, unless again there be help from without, when the colony is deprived of the means of importing the requisite quantity of food over what is produced there, the deficiency will be measured by hunger and positive starvation. This arises from the newness of the infant community—we had almost said front the rapid progress of the settlement—combined with the sudden ruin of its public and private credit, and destruction of its currency by an act ot' its Government. The case is the same as it' a quantity of land had been reclaimed from the sea in this country, and in- habited by people engaged in preparing for its cultivation, drawing their food, meanwhile, from the old linens in the neigh- bourhood, by means of a money capital, and then entirely cut off from intercourse with the district where food was super- abundant. Such a community would suffer in such an event just in proportion as they had rather bt•ea occupied in rendering the new land habitable and apt for production than in merely putting seed into the naked earth. It' their mode of colonizing the new land had been more rude, they would have been less liable to the evils of a monetary convulsion. Ilut let us not in dwelling on this ease, which has been supposed for the sake of illustration, lose sight or the true cause of the dangers which beset South Australia. The sole author of the diaaeter is the reckless Governor. His ex- tsavagance alone occasions this Colonial bankruptcy. Though the crash will be great in proportion to the artificial or civilized cha- racter of the settlement—just as a state of anarchy would be more disastrous in England where only a third of the people are engaged in raising food, than in France where two-thirds are agriculturists— yet we are not to regret that the colony had credit and a currency

to destroy, and a town population to starve, but that the unbridled folly of an individual should have done such enormous mischief.

We must repeat once more, that if the colony is to be saved, it can only be by means of help from without. The obvious remedy is to prevent the return of Governor GAWLEIt'S hills. But here again, as misfortunes never come singly, two difficulties present themselves. The first is, that the Commissioners, who would be authorized by the South Australian Act to corer these bills by a loan, creating a Colonial debt equal to their amount, do not enjoy public corfidence in this country ; and in the next place, whatever were the credit of these new Commissioners, nobody would be disposed to advance money thr the purpose, or at least with the effect, of enabling Governor Getw Lea or sonic other irresponsible officer to play such a prank over again. Without an efficient check on public expenditure in the colony—without the only check that we Englishmen can suppose to be efficient, namely, popular control by means of representation and executive responsi- bility—it will be vain to appeal to private capitalists here fbr the means of paying Governor GAWLER'S bills; and even with the best guarantee against future improvidence on the part of the Colonial Government, it may be doubted whether money would be advanced at the call of Commissioners who were appointed without the least regard to the wishes of the South Australian public in this country, whose time is occupied with the affitirs of many other colonies, and who, as Commissionprs frr South Australia, have done nothing since their appointment but remove their office front the Adelphi to the Bird Cage Walk—the part of London the most perhaps out of the way of all sorts of business relating to Coloni- zation—as it' their object had been to tell the world that they in- tended to do nothing?' Failing a loan to the Commissioners, there is no resource but in the Treasury and Parliament. A pledge from the Government to apply to Parliament for a guarantee of any loan within some specific amount to be raised by the Commissioners, would procure the requisite funds without delay. South Australia has never yet appeared in the Estimates. Lord Jolts Russnee must, we should think, be aware of the extreme urgency of the case, and the really awful danger of delay ; and he is not apt to shrink from a suitable responsibility. What could become him more thaw the responsibility of saving this colony from destruction ? what less than that of leaving it to its fate ?

* In the absence of any other reason for selecting this spot for the transac- tion of business with capitalists, emigrants. and shipowners, we beg leave to suggest one which is at least rich in illu.stration. The new office belongs to two Commissions composed of the same persons—Messrs. ELMOT, Ton R ENS, and VILLIERS. Colonel TortnEss is flannelly Chairman of the South Australian Commission ; Mr. ELLIOT of the other, which relates to the Colonies in general; hut the real bead and manager of both Boards is commonly supposed to be Mr. ELLtoT. Then why hide themselves from colonizers in Park Street, Westminster? Because there happened to he in that obscure street—in the state in which say active explorer may now find it, close to the new office—a public-house culled The Two Chairmen, and described as Eliot's entire. Will anybody suggest a more probable attractions?