In the new Ministry there is plenty of promise but little of past performance, and withal a good many discordant elements.  The Premier, Mr. Stuart, is a good business man, of education and manners, but that is all that can possibly be said for him.  The Minister for Education, Mr. Reid, is decidedly able, but very young.  The Attorney-General, Mr. Dalley, is a man of great literary ability and a leader of the bar, but he has wretched health.  The rest of the Ministry are nonentities, and by omitting one or two men whose respectability is hardly equal to their ability, Mr. Stuart has raised himself up an Opposition out of his old following.  These will probably combine with Sir Henry Parkes, and qui vivra verra.

The colony, of South Australia has, to my thinking, been peculiarly favoured.  Conceived by political economy and born of religious nonconformity, it has ever been the most sober and respectable province of Australia.  Thanks to Mr. Gibbon Wakefield’s principles, on which the colony was founded, but little of the land fund has been squandered to fill the coffers of influential squatters, and by a system of credit to small freeholders in districts proclaimed suitable for agriculture—­i.e., free selection after and not before survey-a large class of yeomanry have been established on their own farms.  The stamp of the lower middle class (chiefly Dissenters) who formed the bulk of the early settlers has not yet been erased from social and political life.  Never making giant strides, nor stumbling into pits of gold, like her nearest neighbour, South Australia has yet progressed year by year at an even jog-trot along the road of material prosperity.  Although copper-mining has contributed no insignificant quota to the national wealth, the foundations have been laid in pasture, and the main structure is built up in wheat-growing.  Owing to a combination of these circumstances, the division of wealth approaches much nearer to equality than in any of the other provinces.  There are fewer rich and fewer poor.  The standard of wealth is lower.  The condition of the working-class is better and healthier; their chances of becoming proprietors and employers are greater.  The middle class preponderates, but its very size, the diversity of interests it represents, and the stake it has in the general welfare of the country, prevent it from abusing its political power to any serious extent.  Except with its aid, neither the squatters nor the working-class can gain undue advantages; and as this aid has rarely been lent without good reason there is an almost total absence of class antagonism and an excellent public spirit throughout the community, all classes working well together for the common weal.