Note Footnote b: — Chapter II

In his official despatches to the Colonial Secretary Sir George Bowen did not mention at length these initial difficulties; but to Sir E. B. Lytton he wrote more fully. "I have often thought," he said, under date 6th March, 1860, "that the Queensland gentlemen-squatters bear a similar relation to the other Australians that the Virginian planters of 100 years back bore to the other Americans. But there is a perfectly different class of people in the towns. Brisbane, my present capital, must resemble what Boston and the other Puritan towns of New England were at the close of the last century. In a population of 7,000b we have 14 churches, 13 public-houses, 12 policemen. The leading inhabitants of Brisbane are a hard-headed set of English and Scotch merchants and mechanics; very orderly, industrious, and prosperous; proud of the mother country; loyal to the person of the Queen; and convinced that the true federation for these colonies is the maintenance of the integrity of the Empire, and that the true rallying-point for Australians is the Throne."