Australia is the only considerable portion of the world which has enjoyed
the blessed record of unruffled peace. On every other continent, in
nearly every other island large in area, "war's red ruin writ in flame"
has wrought its havoc, leaving evidences in many a twinging cicatrice.
Invasion, rebellion, and civil war constitute enormous elements in the
chronicles of nations; and Shelley wrote that the study of history,
though too important to be neglected, was "hateful and disgusting to my
very soul," because he found in it little more than a "record of crimes
and miseries." A map of the globe, coloured crimson as to those countries
where blood has flowed in armed conflicts between men, would present a
circling splash of red; but the vast island which is balanced on the
Tropic of Capricorn, and spreads her bulk from the tenth parallel of
south latitude to "the roaring forties," would show up white in the
spacious diagram of carnage. No foreign foe has menaced her thrifty
progress since the British planted themselves at Port Jackson in 1788;
nor have any internal broils of serious importance interrupted her
prosperous career.

This striking variation from the common fate of peoples is attributable
to three causes. First, the development of a British civilisation in
Australia has synchronised with the attainment and unimpaired maintenance
of dominant sea-power by the parent nation. The supremacy of Great
Britain upon the blue water enabled her colonies to grow to strength and
wealth under the protection of a mighty arm. Secondly, during the same
period a great change in British colonial policy was inaugurated.
Statesmen were slow to learn the lessons taught in so trenchant a fashion
by the revolt of the American colonies; but more liberal views gradually
ripened, and Lord Durham's Report on the State of Canada, issued in 1839,
occasioned a beneficent new era of self-government. The states of