The paradox of freedom: How exclusion shaped Australia's democratic identity

“ Abounding in vast and still undeveloped resources, possessing large areas of unoccupied territory, blessed with many safe and commodious harbours, and enjoying the freest of free constitutions, there is nothing to prevent the Australian colonies becoming, at no distant date, a second America, a national safety-valve, a home for millions. Manhood suffrage is the almost universal law, and no restriction whatever is placed, nor would it be tolerated for an instant, on the free and untrammelled exercise of the franchise. ”

“ The freedom for Aboriginal people to work and live where they wished was curtailed, The forced separation of many children from their Aboriginal families, and the systematic exclusion of Aborigines from white society through segregation had drastic consequences for Aboriginal people. ”

“ Lalor was one of the members for Ballarat, and the mining population was as quiet, law-abiding, and industrious as any other section of the community.
That the armed resistance of the diggers on the Eureka paved the way for democratic freedom in the Australian colonies, and abolished for ever a semi-military despotism over free-born men, is an historical feet that cannot be called into question. ”

“ The success of free democratic institutions demands of our people education, intelligence, and patriotism, and the State should protect them against unjust and impossible competition. Remunerative labor is the basis of contentment. Democracy rests on the equality of the citizen. Oriental coolieism will give us another race-problem to solve and surely we have had our lesson.” [181]
The necessity for rigid Oriental exclusion is nowhere better exemplified than by the alarm felt to-day in California by the extraordinarily high birth-rate of its Japanese residents. ”

“ We are cool-headedly, clear-mindedly setting down a few crucial, epochal facts regarding the accomplishments of the Old World radicals who shook the shackles of oppression from their light feet and fled despotism to people a continent: who built an empire and rewrote the philosophy of freedom and compelled the world to accept its wiser, happier forms of government. ”

“ Here the seed of democracy planted itself in virgin soil, to grow and bear fruit without hindrance. Here was, therefore, the natural birthplace of that great charter of human rights and human liberty, the Declaration of Independence, pointing out the goal to be reached, and destined to serve as a guiding star to all mankind. If here the momentous problem of government of, for and by the people is not to be solved, where in the world can it be? ”

“ And since our nation at its very birth solemnly proclaimed the doctrine that of right 'all men are born free and equal' as before the law, and have an equal right 'to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' perhaps these Democrats may be willing to let these provisions in behalf of slavery be dropped out of the Constitution when they shall have become no longer any thing but a dead letter—with no power of political victory and reward in them. As a living contradiction to the Declaration of Independence they have been the source of all our woes. ”

“ One spot remains which oceans cannot wash out. The slavery of the African race, which the North Americans had inherited from the ancient monarchy, was adopted and fondly cherished by the new Republic.... The logic of the Constitution declared that all men were free: the pride and avarice of the slave-owners, disowning the image of the Creator and the brotherhood of nature, degraded men of a dark color, and even all the descendants of their sons and daughters, to a level with oxen and horses. ”

“ On the contrary, it was the rise and growth among the slaves of a determination to be free and an active part of American democracy that forced American democracy continually to look into the depths; that held the faces of American thought to the inescapable fact that as long as there was a slave in America, America could not be a free republic; and more than that: as long as there were people in America, slave or nominally free, who could not participate in government and industry and society as free, intelligent human beings, our democracy had failed of its greatest mission. ”

“ In a peculiar way, then, the Negro in the United States has emancipated democracy, reconstructed the threatened edifice of Freedom and been a sort of eternal test of the sincerity of our democratic ideals. As a Negro minister, J. W. C. Pennington, said in London and Glasgow before the Civil war: “The colored population of the United States has no destiny separate from that of the nation in which they form an integral part. Our destiny is bound up with that of America. Her ship is ours; her pilot is ours; her storms are ours; her calms are ours. If she breaks upon a rock, we break with her. ”

“ They ask themselves, what is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances? or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary, in preference to what suits their own inclination. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they live in crowds; ”

“ And now to ask a Southerner to be the slave of a slave——”
“And yet, Doctor,” said Stoneman coolly, “manhood suffrage is the one eternal thing fixed in the nature of Democracy. It is inevitable.”
“At the price of racial life? Never!” said the Southerner, with fiery emphasis. “This Republic is great, not by reason of the amount of dirt we possess, the size of our census roll, or our voting register—we are great because of the genius of the race of pioneer white freemen who settled this continent, dared the might of kings, and made a wilderness the home of Freedom. ”

“ The ignorance and stolidity of the London docker, of the Irish peasant, of the Russian serf, of the central European farm labourer, have no equivalent in Australia. The people of this country are facile and quick-minded. ”

“ When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set. ”

“ In Australia, there is rapidly growing up a set of conventions and a habit of speech founded on a close study of the older community. There is such a thing as Australian society. It exists. It is ambitious. It aspires to be recognised. It wants to grow. Some of its members have been presented at Court and have brought back with them large social aspirations. Certain of its women have been taken into dinner by members of the British peerage. ”

“ He thinks like a Tory, and talks like a Radical, and that’s so important nowadays. ”

“ Most of the leaders of ministries and heads of parties that I have met in Australia have been, and are, extremely dignified; and, as a rule, the most dignified have been the most accessible. It is not the kind of dignity that surrounds itself with much outward pomp and ornament ”

“ There is much virtue in a particular look, in a mode of speech, in a mannerism. If you have not the main thing, which is natural ability and power of carrying conviction, it is possible to get something else—something that will focus the attention of the spectators in the outer ring. Every one knows the story of the man who laughed. He has had his counterpart, and a very successful counterpart, in Australian politics. It will be recorded of one man of obscure beginnings that he was a genial, capable, extremely popular person, who laughed, and became Premier of Victoria. ”

“ Even there you will found States only for free labor to maintain and occupy. The interest of the whole race demands the ultimate emancipation of all men. Whether that consummation shall be allowed to take effect, with needful and wise precautions against sudden change and disaster, or be hurried on by violence, is all that remains for you to decide. The white man needs this continent to labor upon. ”

“ It urges only and simply the fair judgment, that the white man's uses of this continent rightfully succeed to and displace the red man's uses of it. This is not saying, nor necessarily implying, that the white man should displace and exterminate the red man. Quite other and far less simple and well-grounded reasoning and argument and dealing with facts and principles come in, when, from standing for the fair uses of enormous portions of the earth's territory, we pass to the treatment of those who were found in occupancy of it. ”

“ Let any one who doubts, read the book to which I have several times referred, and he may be satisfied that it was forced upon us by the extremest exigency of circumstances, in a struggle for very existence. Without it, it is doubtful whether a white man would be now existing on this continent—certain, that if there were, they would be in a state of the utmost destitution, weakness, and misery. ”

“ The duty to exclude carries the right to expel. Within twenty years we can peacefully colonize the negro in the tropics, and give him our language, literature, 47 religion, and system of government under conditions in which he can rise to the full measure of manhood. This he can never do here. It was the fear of the black tragedy behind emancipation that led the South into the insanity of secession. We can never attain the ideal Union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable. ”

“ Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the storm came and the wind blew. Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the white race—is his natural and normal condition. ”

“ It should be noted, to begin with, that all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect. That is not to say that all such restrictions are unconstitutional. ”

“ There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. [11] We have consistently denied [p. 12] the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. ”

“ So, to-day one needs no prophet’s mantle to foresee that presently the world [Pg 270] will be cut up with immigration barriers which will never be levelled until the intelligent accommodation of numbers to resources has greatly equalized population-pressure all over the globe.... Dams against the color races, with spillways of course for students, merchants, and travellers, will presently enclose the white man’s world. Within this area minor dams will protect the high wages of the less prolific peoples against the surplus labor of the more prolific. ”

“ Then this year, 1963, I came to Australia to take part in Canberra's 50th anniversary celebration. These are all vitally important milestones in Australia's history because they represent progressive steps.
The rivalry between the States, the intense local patriotism of cities and districts is a typical sign of a healthy and vigorous democratic people, but Australia's future and prospects turn on the whole Australian nation.
Of all the continents, Australia has the unique distinction and advantage of being one people under one Government. ”

“ Subsections (1) and (2) do not apply to a person who— (a) has a right (whether revocable or not) to permanent residence in Australia; or (b) is a naturalized Australian citizen; or (c) is registered as an Australian citizen under Section 11 of the Australian Citizenship Act 1948-1975 of Australia; or (d) is a citizen of a country other than Australia, unless that person renounces his right to residence in Australia or his status as a citizen of Australia or of another country in accordance with Subsection (5) . ”

“ Discrimination once permitted cannot be bridled; recent history in the South shows that in forging chains for the Negroes the white voters are forging chains for themselves. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’; this government cannot exist half-slave and half-free any better to-day than it could in 1861.
“Hence we call upon all the believers in democracy to join in a national conference for the discussion of present evils, the voicing of protests, and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty.” ”

“ And whenever there is free speech there and whenever there is a free ballot there, they will vote the Republican ticket. I say again, there are hundreds of thousands of good people in the South; but the institution of human slavery prevented free speech, and it is a splendid fact in nature that you cannot put chains upon the limbs of others without putting corresponding manacles upon your own brain. When the South enslaved the negro, it also enslaved itself, and the result was an intellectual desert. No book has been produced, with one exception, that has added to the knowledge of mankind ”

“ It is a paradox indeed, this thing of a race's holding its identity at the same time that it is supposed to lose this in the larger civilization. Apply the principle to the Negro. Very soon after the Civil War, when conditions were chaotic and ignorance was rampant, the ideals constantly held before the race were those of white people. Some leaders indeed measured success primarily by the extent to which they became merged in the white man's life. ”

“ The Negro, being held up as a terrible hobgoblin to political white folks, it was necessary to destroy his citizenship; which was accomplished by wily and cruel means. About one and a half million citizens were disfranchised and yet we have a paradox. This vast mass of manhood is represented in Congress—in what way? By arbitrarily nullifying the constitution of the Nation. It was the boast in 1861 that one Southern man could whip ten Yankees. May not this same class of Southern politicians now proudly and truly boast that one Southern vote is equal to ten Yankee votes? ”

“ It is no wonder that outsiders call us parochial. It is no wonder that they say we are lacking in perspective. It is no wonder that, when we go to London, they judge us by our odd pieces of genre-painting, and tell us that there is no market for that sort of thing in the metropolis—that we had better have stayed at home.
It is astonishing how few people, even of those who have lived in Australia all their lives, have succeeded in discovering Australia. ”

“ Vice, as already pointed out, is to some extent a relative term; and if the motive is not petty or sordid, if the actor can rise to great occasions, if the man or woman is superior to the occasional outbreaks of his or her worse nature, it is safe to say that the nation is still capable of great things, and is by no means inherently bad. The most noteworthy characteristic of the Australian is his mental attitude to life. It is an attitude that is in danger of becoming crudely materialistic. ”

“ If as you say Australia is like the poor prostitute, and the Australian just bullies her to get what he can out of her and then treats her like dirt.”
“It’s a good deal like that,” said Jack.
“And then you expect me to approve of you.”
“Oh, we’re not all alike, you know.”
“It always seems to me,” said Somers, “that somebody will have to water Australia with their blood before it’s a real man’s country. The soil, the very plants seem to be waiting for it.”
“You’ve got a lurid imagination, my dear man,” said Jack.
“Yes, he has,” said Harriet. “He’s always so extreme.” ”

“ Outside of political circles, and outside of the Labour party, there is a certain body of opinion that sees, or professes to see, indications of coming change. Causes of irritation are always arising. English newspaper criticism of [Pg 306] Australia is one fruitful source of complaint. The returned Australian—the man who has battled hard for a living in London and has more or less failed—comes back with the conviction that racial sentiment is a vain and foolish thing. ”

“ If, now, we have a democracy with no excluded groups, with all men and women enfranchised, what is such a democracy to do? How will it function? What will be its field of work?
The paradox which faces the civilized world today is that democratic control is everywhere limited in its control of human interests. Mankind is engaged in planting, forestry, and mining, preparing food and shelter, making clothes and machines, transporting goods and folk, disseminating news, distributing products, doing public and private personal service, teaching, advancing science, and creating art. ”

“ Seven thousand miles from our shores, in a land divided for over 300 years by the most pervasive form of racial hatred and violence, blacks and whites participated in free elections that elevated Nelson Mandela to the Presidency of South Africa.
Democracy's triumph in that distant land owes much to our own history and our own people. For over two centuries we have led the world by example, showing how human beings of different complexions, ethnic origins, and religious beliefs can come together under the great umbrella of freedom. ”

“ Well, what I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain workers, nor heart-sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all—the realization at last of the meaning of the word COMMONWEALTH.
Now this view of Socialism which I hold to-day, and hope to die holding, is what I began with; ”

“ The values on which our Nation was founded: individual liberty, self-determination, the potential for human fulfillment in freedom, all of these endure. We find these democratic principles praised, even in books smuggled out of totalitarian nations and on wallposters in lands which we thought were closed to our influence. ”