ried for killing a
fellow, during some fall-out. He appealed to those judging him: "I came
here, having the heart of a man, and your convict system, with its brutal
associations, has given me the heart of a beast."'

England built in tribulations--nations! At first we had no better use for
Australia than to moor hulks to it. That was an eddy in the nobler stream
of tribulation which, like the Nile, bore all fertility in its waters.
Sir George Grey sat upon a Mount Pisgah that commanded the past and the
future. He saw the stream, beginning in far-away mist-crowned sources,
roll down the ages. It was a flood of destiny.

'I suppose,' he submitted, 'we all recognise that there are certain
driving forces behind the march of humanity. We may not see them, or we
may merely get a glimpse of them now and then, but they are there, and
always in operation. Providence; that is my word. The chief of these
forces we have, as I hold, in the evolution of the Anglo-Saxon race.'

Go back to the England of Elizabeth, and what did we find? A race of
hardy men, who took delight in sailing virgin seas, in becoming familiar
with new countries; who were opening up fresh tracks across the globe.
Following upon that, consider the drift of legislation in the British
Isles, from the period of Elizabeth. It was to appropriate the land into
the hands of a few, to create great landlords, to make individual men the
owners, nay the tyrants, of vast areas. This meant depriving the common
people of their natural means of subsistence. It forced them to maintain
themselves where there was actually no room, with the outcrop of want,
suffering, discontent.

The great eating up of the Irish land, the throttling of the natural
wealth of that country, began with the ill work done in the Elizabethan
age. Yet, the full mischief did not appear until Sir George's own early
days, when the Irish people were leaving their native land in ship-loads.
In England the result came sooner, and ran on continuously, rather than
burst the wave which was to engulf Ireland.

'Has it ever occurred to you,' Sir George asked, 'how beautiful a
contribution the Irish girl, driven to another land by starvation, has
made to the development of the English-speaking race? What a stretch of
Anglo-Saxondom has been peopled by her wages, hardly earned in service,
and sent home to Ireland for the emigration of her father and mother, her
sisters and brothers! She is a winning illustration