Reflections After a Wandering Life in Australasia: Second Paper

I.

MUCH more interesting to a stranger than even the political condition of a new country is the national type that it is developing. But a brief wandering, especially through the more settled parts of a land, can tell you but little of so complex a matter as a new social type. You must camp and hunt, or do business, with the frontiersman of our race for a long time before you can comprehend him. In the cities he has arts of his own for concealing himself. You know him best when you have seen him in the wilds, and the Australian, like the New Zealander, has been long enough in his own country to be decidedly conscious of his peculiarities, and decidedly contemptuous of the traveler or of the “ new chum ” who pretends too easily to understand him. Only a few social features of the colonies attracted my attention sufficiently to make their mention here at all worth while.

Most noteworthy of these features is the prominence of public sports. Such prominence is natural in an English colony, but its extent surprised me. The great popularity of public sports in this country dates only a little way back in our history. For a long time we were either too pious or too busy to play ; we were ashamed to seem amused ; we had few holidays, and were bored by what we had. Nowadays there is an apparent change, but it still does not go so deep as might be supposed (by a careless observer). Our most popular athletes, outside of the colleges, are “professionals,” who perform for our amusement like gladiators. Public sports are not in such sense popular, as they are in the colonies. There the professional players of football and cricket are not nearly so numerous as the devoted amateurs. Young men of very fair social station, who can somehow find the time, long to become famous as amateur athletes. The athletic rivalries between clubs, towns, colonies, do not lead, as with us, to a mere buying and selling of a few prominent professional athletes to represent the contesting associations and communities. The people take warm interest, because it is the people who are carrying on the contest; and those actually engaged in the game are not hired gladiators, but picked representatives. Hence, as I was more than once assured, athletic and other sporting ambitions take up a very large place indeed in the lives of the young men of Australia and New Zealand. “ Our young men do not read,” said one friend to me ; “ they play.” This was an irresponsible and very general remark, and was not meant to cover everything ; but I fancy that this out-door life of the colonial population is going to affect in a very important way their future as compared with

Ours.

At all events, thus far life in the colonies, without being by any means idyllic or perfectly healthy, lacks some of the elements of strain and worry that make our own life bear so hard upon our constitutions. Competition is severe, but not so merciless to the individual as with us. Such, at least, was the impression that I gathered from several sources ; and such is what one would be led to expect from the comparative isolation of the little nation that now occupies Australasia. When the strain comes, as of course it must come with time, as the population grows denser and the problems of existence become harder, one feels that the colonial will always have two safeguards to fall back upon. One will be this love of healthy exercise and of sport, — a love whose dangers are surely far outweighed by its advantages; and the other will be found in the influence of that very tendency which our previous paper showed to be so marked and probably often so dangerous in colonial political life, namely, the strong tendency to close social organization. For if one leaves politics, and passes to other forms of social life, the tendency to high organization is surely one of the best that a rapidly growing community could desire.

Political organization is indeed apt to be of that artificial Frankenstein sort that in our former sketch we viewed with such suspicion. And this fact is due to the coercion that must usually attend every step in the process, from the temptations that the possession of power offers to the rulers, from the false hopes that a strong government will excite in the minds of the voters who expect to control its policy. But elsewhere in social life this is not so. Organization, if it succeeds, does so by virtue of the loyalty of the individuals, and the result must be in general normal and progressive. Now with us, in this country, the tendency has always been, until recently, decidedly individualistic. Our greatest expositor of the practical wisdom of life, Emerson, was an apostle of individualism, who found the divine plan perfectly realized in the best of possible worlds precisely because he found each atom moving according to its own sovereign will and sacred choice. In practice we have largely lived as nearly in accord with that philosophy of the sacredness of broken ties as our sound English common sense would permit us to do. In consequence, we have (not indeed by Emerson’s authority) often cultivated flippancy for the sake of not seeming to ourselves too submissive to order and to social bondage, and have preferred to be rebellious in our lives, even if we had to give ourselves the strain and wear that lonesome individualism always brings with itself. An odd result has been noticeable more than once, of late years, when remarkable and novel forms of social organization have forced themselves upon our attention. In such cases we have accepted the novelty and have enjoyed its benefits, but we have regarded it as something foreign to ourselves, as a form of tyranny or as an expression of somebody’s greed. We have rebelled at our own progress. A good example is seen in the case of the organization of capital, first in the management of our great modern railway systems, and later in the formation of the trusts which are just now such a terror to our public. Nobody with his eyes open ought to doubt that these forms of organized enterprise, however selfish may be the purposes of their managers, and however corrupt may be this or that great corporation or trust, are on the whole inevitable stages in our healthy social evolution, beginnings of a higher social order. The movement towards concentration of effort in great companies is simply one of our most noteworthy forms of progress, preventing in the long run the waste of effort involved in capricious competition, and giving a great number of people fixed and rational careers, instead of leaving them to wild schemes and vain private struggles. Yet this modern tendency, irresistible as the tides, and beneficent as any sort of true social growth must be, we denounce as monopoly, and regard as a public enemy. As if it were not we ourselves whose combined will is expressed in these great organizations ! They are not foreign oppressors, these “ monopolies ; ” they are our own creatures, our most powerful servants ; and, despite their sins and their failings, they represent our destiny.

Now in the colonies, if I am right, the growth of extra-political social organization will be much more rapid and much healthier than with us, simply because individualism is subordinated from the outset. The Australian will have in his past history no Declaration of Independence, no Boston Massacre, no King George, to keep alive the tradition that the higher life consists, above all things, in hating tyrants. He received his true freedom — that is, the freedom to develop his social order in his own way — long since, and quite peacefully; and with this freedom he has inherited an immense respect for the social order itself. Consider, for instance, the prevalence of lynch law amongst us, and observe that the colonies, often with quite as bad elements to deal with as we have ever known, have been everywhere almost free from lynch law. The Sydney mob has been, in its way, as much of a nuisance, in proportion to the size of the population, as our worst cities have had to show. The old convict life left behind it enough bad characters to render several great vigilance committees necessary, if the colonial frontiersman had been as much a believer in that sort of thing as our frontiersman. Meanwhile, the ordinary types of degeneracy found in new countries have been well known in both New Zealand and Australia. The colonist has often drunk hard, like our frontiersman, has often gambled, has lived his wild life ; and yet, after scarcely a generation of organized freedom, the colonies show a degree of conservatism, of public spirit, of social discipline, of cheerful conformity to the general will of the community, which decidedly puts to shame, I think, such a region as our own California, as it exists at this moment. This I say not by any means solely on the basis of what I saw with my own eyes, but after a somewhat careful study of a good many sources of information. The very newspapers, as compared with our own, are evidence of a much higher and cleaner social consciousness. Only one prominent weekly that came under my eyes in Australia (the representative, namely, of the young Australian movement, whose motto is “ Australia for the Australians ”) made a show of imitating our own fashions of newspaper flippancy, irresponsibility, and rebelliousness. This seemed to me a very ably edited weekly, and I took it to be the organ of an important social tendency in the colonies ; but I was far from believing that Australia, whenever it comes to exist in reality “ for the Australians,” will conform to the ideals of this journal. On the contrary, the Australian, while loving the liberty of his wide land and of his out-door sports, will, if the present promise is fulfilled, always have a great love for social ties. New enterprises, where they are not handed over to the state, will from the first be conducted by organized association. The high development of trades-unions in such a new community as Victoria is already a sufficient indication of the general instinct. The rapid growth of Melbourne in comparison to the country population of Victoria, exemplifies the same tendency, especially if one contrasts the municipal development of this city, as shown by the very externals of the place, with the ill-kept streets that still distinguish San Francisco amongst the cities of our own land.

If we turn to other features of colonial society, we meet, indeed, with tendencies that are not altogether so promising. In New Zealand, people of intelligence complain very justly of the extravagant provincialism that characterizes life in the far too isolated districts of the two long islands. In a less degree, the same is true of the Australian colonies. Every one has heard of the jealousies, to an outsider so amusing, between Victoria and New South Wales. Such petty jealousies imbittered our own national life long enough to make the thing as comprehensible as it is lamentable in the eyes of any American. Of course two such vigorous young states must needs have their generous rivalries ; and where there exists a difference of opinion about the tariff, such rivalries must needs be somewhat hearty, not to say passionate. But when Sir Henry Parkes, the premier of New South Wales, calls the Victorians “ foreigners,” as he not long ago did in a very savage speech in Parliament, and when the two colonies at times wax so fierce over some boundary question, of riparian rights or of tolls, that a stranger would fancy war to be imminent, then indeed the rivalries must appear to the world rather schoolboyish than generous, and rather peevish than hearty. Yet the reality of the thing seems as clear to those engaged as its shameful triviality appears to all disinterested persons. People of the same race and nation, heirs to the same great land, separated from all the world by vast oceans, and given the common task of developing the great future empire of the southern hemisphere, waste most stupidly every moment of eternity that they spend in such absurd neighborhood squabbles, when all the interests at stake are of the sort that civilized men are wont to adjust by appealing to established courts of law.

Here, in fact, is the other side, and the darker side, of that swift and easy tendency to social organization of which we have been speaking. Each community organizes itself, and the temporary result is provincialism. The rapid growth of Victoria has become a burden on the soul of New South Wales; while the free trade and the pretension to historical dignity which characterize New South Wales excite astonishingly acute jealousies in Victoria. Accusations of want of true patriotism are freely exchanged between the two colonies. “ Who stands in the way of Australian federation ? ” asks the Victorian. “ New South Wales,” he answers, " of course ; for New South Wales opens her ports to all the countries of the world, and thereby makes it impossible for us to open our markets to her industries. Hence New South Wales, driving off not only ourselves, but other self-respecting colonies as well, chooses to stand isolated amongst us, the foe to union.” “ Talk of union ! ” the dweller in New South Whiles indignantly retorts, — “ talk of union! And yet you will not even trade with us on even terms. Who establishes a tariff wall between the colonies? Who by this means creates continual discord among brethren? No. we, surely. We are the free traders. You are the ones to insist upon local isolation. Take down your walls, and where is the obstacle to federation ? ”

I happened to witness an amusing incident in this standing feud while passing through Sydney. It was my good fortune to meet several gentlemen, mostly Victorians, who were then attending a conference, held in Sydney, of an union intended to promote the cause of the federation of the colonies. These gentlemen, all of them very able and successful men, were just then in a very idealistic mood, as we of English stock are apt to be when we are on a holiday, and are about to speak for a noble cause. They pointed out to me, as a sympathetic stranger, the vast possibilities of the future of Australia. They insisted that this was the world where everything, from those somewhat doubtful six-hundred-foot gum-trees of the Australian mountains to the human spirit itself, would be sure to grow farther heavenward than anywhere else on the planet. For courtesy’s sake they were willing to except America, which for the present they regarded as an elder sister, of lofty fame and great nobility; but they bade America beware of her laurels whenever Australia should come to exist, as she erelong must exist, solely “ for the Australians.” Then her glories would know no bounds. I cheerfully assented, with a few becoming patriotic reservations, to all these assertions, and we feasted harmoniously together.

When the conference in question assembled, I was visiting friends in the suburbs of Sydney, and did not attend ; but, as I learned from the papers, the speakers at the conference pursued these same thoughts further in their addresses, and then proved that the one thing needful to make Australia glorious was that she should be united within her own borders by all the ties of free intercolonial traffic and of close federation, whereas in relation to the world without her ports should be well guarded, her industries fully protected, her foreign trade carefully regulated.

But although this conference was held in Sydney, the voices of its orators were as the voices of men crying in the wilderness. Nobody seemed to be converted. The Sydney Chamber of Commerce declined to recognize the conference as a representative affair. The Sydney papers with one accord laughed, and said : " Aha ! See these Victorian capitalists ! Here they come and talk of colonial federation and the glorious future of United Australia, and all that they want is to have at their mercy the markets of New South Wales, and to set up here amongst us a protective tariff against England, so as to keep out their competitors. Intercolonial free trade indeed ! When have we set up any obstacles to intercolonial free trade ? Are we not the one free-trade colony ? Who then stands in the way of United Australia but your Victorian protectionist ? ” I confess that in this controversy I somehow sympathized in the main with my Victorian friends, although I am in general no protectionist. But, at all events, this mingling of lofty ideals, of intercolonial jealousies, and of conflicting business interests formed a small comedy, with which a visiting stranger was not a little amused.

Provincialism, then, is the great curse of the Australasian ; and so it must needs be for years. Especially unfortutunate, however, is the tendency already existent amongst certain young Australasians to feel indifferent towards all influences from other parts of the world. I heard indeed more of this indifference than I saw. “ Many of our young men,” people said, “ knowing nothing of the older world, fancy that nothing can be of great value in civilization which has not already been transplanted here. They are intolerant and narrow.” I confess that such bigotry is not very noticeable on the surface of things as yet. The Australian newspaper preserves, on the whole, the sound old English traditions ; devotes large space to the rest of the world ; has correspondents in England, and often also in America and on the continent of Europe; and discusses many of the world’s current social and literary questions almost as much as we do. But the healthy sporting life of the intelligent young men does not leave them much time for reading or for thinking. Their parents still speak familiarly of “ home,” meaning England; but erelong this home feeling will pass away ; and one questions whether that intimate union with the world’s intellectual life, which we ourselves have cultivated with a very warm zeal only within the last quarter of a century, will be possible for the coming generation in the colonies. Nothing could be more dangerous for Australia than to “ cut the painter ” in the intellectual life, whatever may be the result in politics. And the fact remains that a land which at best is about three weeks farther removed from Europe than is our eastern border can only too easily become apathetic about so difficult a matter as the course of modern thought. Meanwhile, the very tendencies that make the Australian journals so well edited and so encyclopædic seem to threaten in another direction the cause of popular education. In early California days, newspapers were almost the only printed matter that the mining population read. Knowing this fact, I was rather strongly impressed by the very first remark that I heard from one prominent gentleman as to the intellectual condition of Australia. “You must know,”he said, “ our people do not read books ; they devour journals.” Against this opinion one must of course put the existence of the splendid public library at Melbourne, the numerous town libraries scattered throughout the colonies, and the very respectable trade of the booksellers in Melbourne, in Sydney, and even in the much smaller city of Auckland. Yet, after all, there are undoubtedly many influences at work in the colonies against the formation of a strong literary class. I do not think these influences at all remarkable in their results so far; what I fear is the future, when the better part of the people will have forgotten the old home, and when a provincial self-consciousness will tend more and more to fight against the vast industry required to keep pace with the world’s mental work. Think how vastly our own intellectual life, such as it is, would suffer if we were two or three weeks farther removed from Europe !

The most serious form that intellectual provincialism anywhere can take is the fear of being " dependent ” upon foreign ideas and fashions. Now, dependence as such is always an evil; but the true relation to foreign lands is one of interaction. When we do our share of the world’s work, and give while we take, then only are we mentally alive. What I think almost inevitable, however, in Australia, is a long period during which, for fear of being slaves, the Australian youth will not care for that close intercourse with the world which alone can make them freemen. And surely these foolish intercolonial jealousies and disputes will do nothing to help the lovers of true civilization in that contest with barbarism which is the fate of all new countries. Unless the really admirable motto, “ Australia for the Australians,” comes to be interpreted in its true meaning, as implying also “ and the Australians for mankind,”the future generations will lead a dull and starved mental life under that disappointing Southern Cross of theirs.

One asks, perhaps, at this point, What literature is Australia producing to prove its power as a growing intellectual nation ? Of course, one who asks this question makes at present small demands. What literature had we to show before 1825 ? But still, so far, after all, the literary production of the colonies, outside of the work in the journals, is not quite on a par with what the general cleverness and intelligence of the colonial population would lead one to expect. Lindsay Gordon is once for all not a poet worthy of more than a passing mention. He wrote a good song or two, and many pages where once in a while a very good line flashes out in the midst of a mass of poor stuff. As for Marcus Clarke’s His Natural Life, that noted novel of the convict days, nobody can fail to feel that its hero is a rather poor Jean Valjean, while its incidents are too numerous, and its plot, with all the ingenuity and vigor displayed, is founded upon the absurdest possible misunderstandings on the part of certain principal characters. However, the book is an extremely intelligent one, with much fine psychology, normal and abnormal, at the basis of its inventions; and it forms, with all its faults, a fine beginning for a literature of fiction. For the rest, if Australia has thus far produced no Bret Harte, a Bret Harte is from one point of view a doubtful blessing. For he may devise such exquisite and unfounded romances concerning a new land that it will thenceforth be impossible to get anybody to hear a word of truth about the country. And that was very much what Mr. Bret Harte actually did for early California. Marcus Clarke’s book has at all events the merit of being in part based upon documents.

At best, however the literature of a new country is but a poor basis for judging the intellectual future of the place. The first genius who happens to appear will set things to rights for himself as we never can hope to imagine them beforehand. Meanwhile, it is not the literary man nor the student, but the man of the people, and especially the frontiersman, who really represents the existing capacity and promise of a new nation. He will not be a learned man, nor yet a perfect man, but he will show one the spirit of his people. I shall never forget one specimen of the true Australian bushman, of the more intellectual type, whom I chanced to have as a fellowpassenger across the Pacific, on my return from the colonies. He was a man a good way past middle life, but still full of vigor and quick of wits ; a person of endless experience, character, impetuosity, ignorance of the great world, practical knowledge of his own little world, bitter humor, fearlessness, independence, and loquacity. He had been in early youth a naval officer, but had passed many years in the bush as explorer, adventurer, and country - newspaper editor. His name I found on official record as one of those who had sought out the survivors of Burke’s illfated exploring party; he had fought the political battles of a frontier town for years as independent editor ; and now, in his old age, he had resolved to see America, and to instruct us a little, I fancy, in the arts of editing and of politics, and meanwhile to interest certain people in this country and in England in the natural wonders of Australia. I think that he had some plan of giving lectures in various parts of the world, although I somehow doubt whether he will ever make a very great success in that field. He was a man with few acquaintances and no great influence, but to talk with him was to have a fine experience of a new sort of manhood. What one most noticed was his courageous idealism. He had passed through all the bitternesses of a long and hard life without ever losing his faith in the value of faithfulness. He was himself as bitter as gall in much of his speech ; he damned with a delightful heartiness ; but there was after all no trace of the cynic about him. He could not believe in many men; he did believe in human life. His humor, such as it was, was totally different from the kind so characteristic of our frontiersman. The cautious self-possession, the show of half-amused melancholy which is our most common art in frontier society, the mixture of good-humor and cynicism, the affected drawl, the quiet manner with which our humorist approaches his end, — all these things were as foreign to my friend as they would be foreign to Frenchmen or Italians.

He was all fire and ferocity from the start; his every tone was a cheerful challenge, and his every remark hunted for your weak point. He was full of his own enthusiasms, and his wit was simply the fire that played above the glowing mass of them. He easily grew excited; and then he knew no bounds to his plainness of speech, except the mere natural boundary caused by the fact that at heart he was a very good fellow, who could never knowingly utter a mean thing. He was impulsive as the squalls that the sailors call the " southerly busters ” of Melbourne. He cared not if you at any time saw his weakness or thrust at it; he trusted to throw you off again by main force. His impulsiveness showed itself also in the judgment of character. He knew you at first sight. You were his friend or his enemy, on God’s side or the other, forthwith, and he greeted you accordingly. He surrendered himself uncritically and carelessly to the man whom he chose to like ; bargained away his own rights almost without knowing the fact; expected all from his friend, as he gave all; expected the worst of his enemy,as he meant to give it; and went about everything, his wordy warfare, his friendly self-surrender, his bitter enmities, with the same merry earnestness and cheerfully impulsive fierceness. By reason of his tireless aggressiveness, he might indeed have been a fearful household companion, but he would surely have been a magnificent desert companion, — one who only needed troubles to make him the more spirited, and common foes to make him the more warmhearted a friend. In his criticisms of Australian life and people he was as reckless as he was idealistic. He had a strong love for strong government as such, but a bitter hatred of all dominant personalities, like one who longs to have God’s kingdom come on earth, but who somehow cannot bear to see any priest or any one else called holy strutting about amongst his fellows here below. Hence, with all his evident love of authority in the abstract, my friend damned most violently the colonial aristocracy for its shams, the radical politicians for their time-serving, the rich for their greed, and the workingmen for their grossness. Yet, withal, the condemnation was not the merely bitter talk of a disappointed man. It was the free speech of the nomad, who in youth had known the discipline of a quarter-deck, and who had ever since carried about, in a faithless world, the ideal of a good order, which somehow nobody near him seemed to be loyally disposed to rear. One could make, as is plain, no very practical use of my friend. His ideas were numerous, but they depended largely on a bushman’s instinct; and he looked for signs of the truth in his world as he would have looked for signs of distant water in the bush. His judgments were meanwhile all his own; he despised authority in matters of opinion. He was as honest a man as he was blunt.

Perhaps my friend was after all no Australian type, but merely an anomaly. In any case, I found in him a more sharply defined, loyal, and yet self-reliant character than I had met on my travels for a long time. There was a little romance, too, in his past that I learned from another fellow - traveler. And this, while I cannot undertake to repeat it at length here, was of a sort to make me think yet more of him. As the reader sees, my regard was not unmingled with a certain dread of the old man ; for who could tell in intercourse with him where his quick sword would next fall ? But at all events I felt that if this is the sort of independent manhood that dwelling in the bush develops, Australia ought not to want for stuff out of which to make plenty of life in the future.

II.

The preceding sketh has enumerated, along with many bright and promising features of Australian life, several dangers that seem to me to threaten the future development of the colonies. The remedy for provincialism is of course always such a breadth of ideals and purposes as enables one, not to destroy, but to transcend, one’s naturally narrow interests. Great nations are never without their provincial temperament, but they have become great by more or less completely humanizing their temperament, by sharing the ideals and the work of humanity without forgetting their private concerns. The remedy for Australia’s other great evil, for overactivity and hasty organization in the political sphere, is such a wealth of political duties as forces a community to move deliberately and cautiously. Therefore in any case the chief hope of Australia must lie in the federation of her now disunited communities. In fact, this work is at present slowly going on. Its significance and its future prospects furnish the most important topic that any one interested in Australia can find there presented to his attention.

The present condition of the federation question in Australasia at large is easily summarized. In 1885 an act to constitute a Federal Council of Australasia was passed by the British Parliament.¹ This act was intended to recognize in every possible way the liberty of action of the individual colonies. No colony was to be subject to the act unless it first passed an act of its own whereby it entered the federation. The topics upon which the Federal Council could legislate were for the first limited to such obvious matters as the enforcement of civil and criminal processes throughout the colonies beyond the original jurisdiction of the courts of any colony, the relation of the colonies with the islands of the Pacific, and similar elementary subjects. No power as to more important topics of legislation was given to the Council except in so far as these topics should first be referred to it by the colonies, and then in so far as the acts of the Council should be especially ratified by each colony concerned in its individual capacity. The Federal Council as constituted is thus little more than a conference of the colonies concerned, with a few special powers added. Into the Council Victoria, Queensland, western Australia, Tasmania, and Fiji entered almost at once. New Zealand is hardly expected to enter at present. The persistent unwillingness of New South Wales to join is due in part to prejudices which our previous discussion has touched upon, but is in any case a serious obstacle in the way of the progress of the federal principle. The close of 1888 has seen south Australia also giving in its adhesion to the Federal Council, so that the isolation of New South Wales becomes more obvious and regrettable.

Very curious, however, is the timidity which has been shown in some quarters at this approach of the coming federation. South Australia, for instance, in its recent action, limits its own acceptance of the act to a period of two years: “ a needless precaution,” remarks the Melbourne Leader, “ seeing that there is nothing to prevent a withdrawal at any time.” And the same colony declines to permit its own legislature to refer any new matter to the Council, in the way contemplated by the imperial act, without the concurrence of an absolute majority of both the provincial legislative houses. New South Wales journals, meanwhile, are in the habit of frequently ridiculing the Council as something that stupidly calls itself federal, whereas it cannot be federal since New South Wales chooses to remain outside. These jealousies and fears will remind any reader at once of parallel cases in an important period of our own history; and we shall at once be led to look forward hopefully to the ultimate triumph of true patriotism over local vanities.

But, after all, federation of the true sort is, as one sees, some distance away. The entrance of New South Wales into the Council would still be far from giving us an Australian nation; and yet such a nation, as we have said, is what must come if Australia is to rise above her crudities, and is successfully to meet her dangers. The form which this future national growth must take becomes an object of no small interest to a sympathetic observer.

In trying to define this future, friendly critics are nowadays accustomed to pretend to expect something named imperial federation. The “ larger England ” is to be ultimately joined, by so-called “silken ties,” into an empire that will in some mysterious fashion differ from the British Empire as now constituted, and that will accordingly represent, perhaps by means of a reformed imperial parliament, all the now widely separated political communities over which the Crown rules. The nation of the future Australasian will thus be, as before, the British nation, but this new British nation will have an unity and an organization far higher than that of to-day. To devise a possible constitution for this imperial federation is a favorite academic exercise of some men who ought to be wiser.

Now it is not hastily, but on the basis of a good deal of reflection upon many facts, that I seriously question the possibility of tying together the widely distant parts of the British Empire any more closely than they are now tied. The present British Empire, so far as it concerns the Australian colonies, exists by virtue of a general good-will, and because it is at present the most convenient fashion of life for all parties. To interfere elaborately with its forms would be to risk very seriously its unity. Enough ground there already is for friction between the colonies and the mother country. From the appointment of a governor for Queensland to the much more vexatious Chinese business, events have lately shown that the life together of mother and child is subject to many greater or less disagreements. Meanwhile, thus far, the good-will outweighs the mutual discord, and Australia is indeed in no immediate danger of “ cutting the painter ” to-day or to-morrow. But one thing which ought to be fairly clear is that Australia does not grow any more closely bound by imperial ties, and is not apt to do so. In the long run the friction must increase rather than decrease. We believe in highly organized social life, but we know also that the inner union of a mother organism and its offspring has definite biological limits. And the British Empire is already big with child, this child being the coming Australian nation. It does not become us to desire that the pregnancy should last forever merely because unity is good, nor even because childbirth has its pangs. Let the child be born, not prematurely, but in due time, and grow, and increase in favor with God and man.

This view that, not from the mere love of discord, but from the very necessity of its own healthy development, an Australian federation must come in time to seek its destiny outside of the imperial connection needs some defense, especially in our days, when the fashion of political speculators is to proclaim the coming imperial federation, and to preach to the colonies the gospel of salvation by British unity. But the considerations which should lead us the other way in this investigation are not hard to state.

In the first place, one may ask, Of what present service is the imperial connection to the young Australian communities ? The service is undoubtedly great, but it is not boundless. As a prominent Australian politician observed to me, “We need two things, above all, from the empire. Against direct foreign invasion Victoria and New South Wales could indeed already feel reasonably secure. The harbors are well defended, and our interior, with our resolute and skillful population, would be such a difficult conquest that it is very doubtful whether any foreign power could spare the means and the men to undertake the task, or would find the result worth the enormous cost. But what we do need in the way of protection is security against the violent colonization of the still unsettled parts of Australia by an enemy ; for example, by Russia, or even, in an extreme case, by China. For this amount of self-protection we are still too weak ; we could not spare men enough to defend the whole continent. Here the prestige of the empire must for a good while be our refuge. The other aid that we require and get from the imperial connection lies in the investment of home capital. This would be forthcoming in no such quantity if we were to separate ourselves; and we have not enough financial strength at present to depend upon our own resources.” To these two advantages one might obviously add the indirect protection which is given to the colonies by the fact that British prestige prevents a general seizure of the islands of the Pacific by various European powers. It would be somewhat hard to find what other tangible interests at present require of the Australian colonies a continuance of the imperial connection.

In the second place, we may inquire whether these ties are likely to be always as binding upon the Australians as they now are. The obvious answer is negative. To grow older is in time to outgrow these forms of dependence. English capital will not only be less needed in Australia when the country has become richer, but it will be more willing to come to Australia, even without the protection of the imperial flag, whenever Australia has grown strong enough to protect herself from all foreign foes; and then no physical obligations will longer force the Australian to hold on to his “ painter.”

But once more we may inquire whether the colonies can ever outgrow the strong natural affection which binds them to the British connection. True loyalty is indeed not a mere matter of money and of protection, but rests upon ties of kindred and of patriotic love. Will not the great British Empire always excite in the heart of a true Australian this loyalty ? Would not separation involve a treason that the healthy colonial mind must always hate ?

This question brings us at length before two problems, one of fact and one of right. The question of fact is just here the more important. Social duties never run utterly counter to social facts, but depend upon a sound and just use of the facts. If the actual tendency of social evolution in Australia is pretty sure to forbid the permanence of a strict loyalty to the empire, we may be tolerably sure that such loyalty is not permanently defensible on moral grounds. The deeper loyalty of the Australian must always be to his own people. If it is his fate to make on his continent a nation, it will be his duty to make a strong and a free nation.

To return, then, to the facts, is the mere sentiment of imperial loyalty likely to grow stronger in the colonial mind as time goes on? Mr. Froude, in his Oceana, has stated the case in favor of an affirmative answer to this question, and I think that sensible readers must be surprised at the weakness of this case. Could nothing but a few rambling and unauthoritative conversations be used as evidence of the noble sentiments which Mr. Froude attributes to the colonial public ? Is it true that the colonist desires only good-will from his mother country, truly estimable gentlemen for colonial governors, and his share of titles and other honors, in order to be made a true subject of the old land forever ? If so, could not Mr. Froude have proved the fact by other evidence than the aforesaid conversations, and even by other evidence than the glorious public self-sacrifice which was involved in sending the Soudan contingent from New South Wales ? As for that Soudan contingent, there are those who laugh at it, and say that some young men wanted adventure, and some older men wanted court favor at home; and that these together took advantage of a momentary enthusiasm to raise a “ patriotic fund ” for use upon an enterprise which the sound sense of the country did not approve. At all events, it seems to me extremely improbable that the experiment of the Soudan contingent is liable soon to be repeated in Australia.

Meanwhile, as against these facts, we have the much stronger evidence of a growing spirit of independence in the colonies, which is furnished (1) by the recent troubles over the appointment of a governor for Queensland, (2) by the general unwillingness of the colonies to submit to any sort of “ Downing Street ” influence in their home or foreign affairs, (3) by the strong passions that were in particular shown in the course of the anti-Chinese agitation of May and June, 1888, and (4) by the size and vigor of the before-mentioned young Australian party.

As for the first of these indications, the incident in question has small momentary importance, but shows the existence of tendencies of a wider scope than the occurrences themselves can fully express. The contention of the Queensland ministry has in effect been that no governor should be appointed to the colony unless he were sure to be personally acceptable to the people. In its form this contention seemed even to involve as a practical measure the submission of any nomination of an imperial governor to the Parliament of the colony for confirmation. The Saturday Review, in commenting on the case, admitted that Queensland is one of the most forward of the colonies in respect of the loose popular talk about “ cutting the painter.” Surely, however, such tendencies, when once they appear, are hard to deal with. If the home government humors them by visibly deferring to the popular choice of the disaffected colony in every appointment of a governor, the tendencies in question are so much the more encouraged ; but if they are visibly resisted by the appointment of unpopular governors, discontent is only inflamed. The serious thing is that any influential colonial party at all should become disposed to interfere actively with the choice of the representative of the Crown. For such a tendency there is no remedy but forgetfulness ; and Queensland is not likely to forget, nor is her example likely to remain without imitators.

That “ Downing Street ” is something of a bugbear in colonial politics, and that no ministry will gain by the reputation of deferring thereto, is plain enough to any reader of current discussion in the Australian journals. “ Downing Street" is a safe object of attack, because, under the present constitution of the empire, it is so helpless, and is forced to take colonial abuse and resistance so meekly. This impotence of the home government was very clearly illustrated in the case of the Chinese agitation of last year, and we cannot do better than to pass on at once to that matter, especially because the interests therein involved are so far reaching, and because, as I feel, these interests must of themselves alone prove, in the long run, decisive of Australia’s future, and especially decisive in securing her ultimate separation from the empire.

No one, on taking a really wide view of the future history of civilization in the Pacific, ought to doubt a few fundamental truths. First, China is not at all likely to be conquered by any foreign power. The day when such a result seemed probable has passed. The powers nearest to her in intercourse now respect China’s growing strength and political intelligence, and prefer rather to humor than to threaten her indomitable obstinacy. Secondly, if China remains independent, she will become a comparatively formidable and aggressive power, both in Asiatic politics and in the affairs of the Pacific. Self-preservation will in fact force upon her this position. Thirdly, as she grows in activity, great masses of her people will grow more and more disposed to make life comfortable by migrating elsewhere. Finally, no region will prove more attractive to great numbers of Chinese emigrants, or be more liable, if unguarded, to fall under Chinese influence, than Australia, and especially the warmer, sub-tropical portions of Australia. If these things are so, then, in proportion as Australia approaches in wealth and population the dignity of an English-speaking nation, her policy, in self-defense, must be distinctly an anti-Chinese policy, one opposed to the growing influence of the Chinese Empire in the Pacific, and, above all, to an unrestricted introduction of a Chinese population into her own territory. On the other hand, so long as the British Empire remains largely an Asiatic power, with Russian rivalry to contend against, the imperial policy must on the whole aim rather towards a conciliation of Chinese obstinacy, towards the maintenance of friendly commercial intercourse with China, and even, on occasion, towards a closer alliance with China against Russia. Should England ever lose the Indian Empire (which may God forbid! for therein lies one of the strongest safeguards of the progress of civilization in Asia), then indeed her interest in a generally friendly policy towards China would grow far less ; but so also would her power, and the value of the imperial connection to the Australian nationality. But if, as is probable, the Asiatic calling of the British Empire is long to remain the most important factor in determining the imperial foreign policy, then surely the duty of Australia and the duty of England must needs become more and more divergent. In time the moment will surely come when for them to remain together will involve a sacrifice of their respective missions ; and then they will serve humanity best by parting company, not in enmity, but in faithful pursuit of their very different callings. Australia, when she grows a great nation, is to be the first civilized power of the Pacific, and as such must always steadily strive to restrain the influence of China. England, while holding China within certain bounds, must keep her as a friend and ally, so far as may be possible, in the work of resisting Russian ambitions in Asia. Australia may never come to open war with China, but her policy towards the latter can never be one of conciliation, of large mutual concessions. At best these two nations must learn to let each other severely alone. But the British Empire, if it is to exist at all in Asia, must form close relations with China. The only other solution would be an English conquest of China, one of the most improbable of contingencies.

But one may still urge that Australia need never adopt this supposed anti-Chinese policy in the fulfillment of her own mission in the Pacific. Why should not Australia welcome a large Chinese immigration ? Is not the prejudice against such immigration founded upon all sorts of economic fallacies about the evils of cheap labor, and upon various race prejudices that higher civilization will surely teach us to forget ? Has not the American agitation against the Chinese been on the whole rather disgraceful to our intelligence ? Are not the best of us even now ashamed of it ? Is the future of Australia to be determined by the blind hatreds of men of baser sort ?

The plain answer is that, whatever be the merits of the anti-Chinese agitation in America, the Australian feeling on the subject, although shared by the Sydney mob and disgraced by various absurd speeches and indecent outrages, stands for something far more significant than a hatred of cheap labor, or even than a contempt for an alien race. We in this country have suffered and will yet suffer far too deeply from the presence in our midst of a few million very docile and well-meaning negroes to be in a position to doubt the dangers of founding a great nation, in a new country, upon a basis of race heterogeneity. Europe will of course in time master by far the larger part of both Asia and Africa, and will find how to deal with alien races on their own soil. But conquest for the sake of introducing our own civilization is one thing; introducing an alien civilization amongst us for the sake of seeing whether haply we may not some day conquer it is quite another thing. The one act may be forced upon us by historical necessity ; the other amounts to hanging the millstone around our own necks to display the strength of our backs. We did not create the Orientals, and are not to blame if we have trouble in trying to adjust our Asiatic policies ; but we are to blame if, knowing the inevitable disagreements that must result, we invite them to help us form a great nation in our own territory. No, indeed ; race homogeneity is the basis of healthy national life; and even the mixture of the European stocks themselves, although it is inevitable, involves, as here in America, evils enough on the way. It would be suicidal for the Australians to encourage such free intercourse with China as would give them, in fifty years from the present time, when their white population will number perhaps fifteen millions, a Chinese population of say five millions or more.² The possible form that the evil results would take need not to be especially defined in our speculations. The Russians and the Poles, the Turks and their Christian subjects, the Hungarians and their German neighbors, England and the Irish, the North and South in America, will serve to exemplify in various forms the endless possible complications that arise when a great nation must be made, and there are only heterogeneous stocks out of which to make it. That the Chinese will be attracted to northern, and in considerable degree to southern Australia also; that, if not kept off, they will come in great numbers; that, as time goes on, they will grow more and more willing to migrate with their families, and so to colonize the new lands ; and that, as colonists, they would not amalgamate with the European stock, — all these are plainly probabilities of a very high order. Equally probable it is that Australia cannot ward off such a fate without assuming towards China an attitude that must at best be frequently unfriendly, and that will in the long run be utterly inconsistent with the natural Asiatic policy of Great Britain.

We conclude, then, that no base prejudice, but the highest political wisdom, calls Great Britain and Australia along pathways that must further and further diverge. No sentimental cloud-fabric called imperial federation can hope to meet such plain material difficulties as these. Whenever that vision of the hero of Locksley Hall is realized, imperial federation may exist as a part of the federation of mankind. Meanwhile, the hero of Locksley Hall is known to have abandoned his youthful dreams altogether ; and, however loyal we try to be to humanity, we cannot forget that such loyalty must for many centuries to come be expressed only in concrete, and therefore in somewhat exclusive, national organizations.

Well, what history on the whole will probably demand of Australia began to make itself felt last year in the form of a particular “ Chinese agitation.” And as the tragedies of history usually have many farcical incidents in them, so the Chinese agitation of 1888 was no very noble affair. English communities love panics ; and without any other immediate reason than the news that several cargoes of Chinese were on the way to Australia, the population of all the great colonies became suddenly excited. Even New Zealand tried to share in the enthusiasm, although New Zealand has no great reason to fear the coming of the Chinese at present. In estimating the importance of this incident, we must not be deceived by mere shows. It would be folly to call the somewhat unheroic devices by which the Victorian government discouraged the Chinese who tried to land at Melbourne statesmanship ; it would be absurd to dignify the swelling words and cowardly deeds of Sir Henry Parkes at Sydney, in May and June of 1888, by the name of lofty patriotism; and it would be a mistake to call the wild talk of agitators in all the colonies a fair expression of the dignified national spirit. But, on the other hand, it would be unworthy of sensible observers to deny that the whole excitement had a deeper basis in the healthy instinct of the Australian public, and that the attitude which the colonies in this case assumed will be assumed again and again in future, whenever circumstances shall require. The immediate outcome of the agitation was the Chinese conference at Sydney, in June. This conference was as straightforward and sensible in its actions as the public agitators had been unwise and indirect in their conduct. As one of the prominent participants in the conference personally assured me, the question in its present shape seemed to the knowing men a very simple one. The Australian public was of one mind that Chinese immigration must be discouraged, and the responsible statesmen who constituted the conference of colonial representatives were still, on the whole, unwilling to do anything to embarrass unnecessarily the imperial policy. The resulting uniform measure which the colonial legislatures were advised by the conference to adopt was accordingly very moderate in form and very decided in substance. Ships carrying Chinese passengers into Australian ports were to be limited to one Chinese passenger per five hundred tons of the vessel bringing him. As for the imperial government, that was very mildly, but rather peremptorily, advised to see that its treaty obligations towards China were made consistent with this requirement. There the matter for the time ended.

But most noteworthy of all was the fact that throughout the agitation nearly all men in Australia, wise and foolish alike, seemed to agree that if the imperial policy on the Chinese question was really in conflict with Australian interests, the imperial policy must simply give way. There was little talk of imperial patriotism as counseling serious selfsacrifices. Duty to the empire, indeed, meant to everybody, except Sir Henry Parkes and his like, moderation and caution in method. But about the outcome there was no question. In the long run, Australia must make its own Chinese policy, and the empire must conform thereto. This was the sentiment rashly expressed in foolish wise by Sir Henry Parkes and the agitators; quietly assumed in wiser forms by the actually representative public men of the colonies. And this sentiment, I believe, stands for something at once justifiable and permanent. The Chinese question will always be amongst the actualities for Australia. There will always he a conflict between the imperial and the colonial interests in the matter. This conflict will grow worse in time. Australia will never consent to be used as a tool by the empire, and will always insist on going her own way. Some day a crisis will be reached. China will obstinately insist on something that Australia cannot concede, and that the empire, for reasons connected with its Asiatic policy, cannot refuse. Then Australia, by that time grown strong, will decline to be ruled by the interests of England in India, and a separation will take place. No hostility to the great future mission of the British Empire, but on the contrary a strong desire to see that mission successfully carried out, leads us to hope that a vain ambition for a showy imperial federation will not be permitted to stand in the way of the true freedom and prosperity of all branches of the great English stock. For the rest, whenever Australia is strong enough to live alone, she will lose nothing by escaping from the complications into which European politics, endlessly conflicting radical and conservative foreign policies, Egyptian, Irish, and all the other imperial questions, are sure more and more seriously to involve the now so rapidly changing and so seriously embarrassed English nation.

Finally, as to the young Australian party, that, with all its crudities, is no doubt the beginning of the party of the future in Australia. If it makes a true colonial federation its goal, it will become a great, and in time a wise party. Whether its federation ever will include New Zealand may be doubted. New Zealand has its own destiny, more modest than that of its great neighbor, but possibly no less interesting. The two will always be very close friends ; it is not so clear that they will need to be one nation. For Australia there is but one happy destiny, — unity within, and, whenever the proper time comes, a wise independence of all foreign domination. We in America, whose work at home will always be so much more engrossing than our work abroad, but who have, amongst other future tasks, our duty also in the Pacific, will never feel any unkind rivalry towards our southern co-worker in the cause of free civilization, our future sister republic. On the contrary, we shall rejoice and profit by the fact that in time, not by virtue of any narrow provincialism, but in the exercise of a humane vigor, in the carrying out of a vastly important destiny, our brethren of the other hemisphere will serve all mankind by claiming first of all their Australia “ for the Australians.” We all work best abroad when we first possess our own homes in peace.

Josiah Royce.