Arthur Patchett Martin

“ How far have we travelled the Imperial highway then pointed out? Not far, I fear. Since then the Australian colonists have had frequent opportunities of gauging the political aims and aspirations of Mr. Gladstone as head of the State, with the inevitable result of deepening their admiration of Lord Beaconsfield. The foreign and domestic policy of Great Britain since 1880 has been more minutely submitted to colonial critics, thanks to the cable, than was ever before possible. As a result, nowhere is Mr. Gladstone so completely discarded as in Australia and New Zealand. ”

“ Lord Beaconsfield duly acknowledged our patriotic tributes in the customary way, but, perhaps, we shall some day know how he was really affected by this singular outburst of personal, not less than public, admiration from outlying dependencies of the Empire, the like of which no other English statesman has ever evoked. It may be worth inquiring why this is so. If we consider the elements out of which an Australian colony is mainly composed, we find hardly anything analogous to the old Tory party in Church and State of which Disraeli became the leader—and educator—in this country. ”

“ If we consider such a community as that of Victoria, we shall find that the preponderating majority of the more earnest-minded men—that is, of those who have the making of political leaders and influential citizens—carried with them from the mother country strong working-class or middle-class opinions and prejudices. ”

“ Nearly every grown man in the place was an admirer of Lord Beaconsfield, the only exceptions being those who had no patriotic feeling, and were too utterly stupid to have any opinions on Imperial politics, and those "cranks" (to use an admirable American term) whose cleverness furnishes them with paradoxical reasons for differing with their fellow-creatures. Such being the condition of the public mind, it was not difficult to organise a Beaconsfield demonstration in Melbourne. ”

“ Yet so quickly do we grow accustomed to the miracles of science, and take them as ordinary matters of course, that Australians require such temporary interruptions of telegraphic communication to realise the time when they knew what was going on in Europe only by means of the monthly mail steamer. ”

“ But the ablest of these political young Australians eschewed the tinklings of verse, preferring to compose weighty articles on "the Political Future of Europe," and to plead for Colonial representation in the so-called Imperial Parliament. ”

“ What could be more alien to such people than much of the political philosophy of Disraeli's novels? Yet it is a fatal mistake for the ordinary English Liberal or Radical to assert that we democratic colonists were simply fascinated and deluded by Lord Beaconsfield's "showy foreign policy," and what they used to term his "sham Imperialism." It is doubtless the want of all Imperial sentiment, which has marked the English Liberals under the long papacy of Mr. ”

“ In an admirable leading article which appeared in the Melbourne Argus, the writer aptly observed: "The veteran statesman can scarcely fail to experience a lively sense of satisfaction in finding that the courage and wisdom of his conduct have met with the cordial approbation of his countrymen at the Antipodes ”

“ Gladstone, that in the first instance alienated the colonists from a leader whose genius works most smoothly on the broad but perilous path of political disintegration. [3] Nothing is so distasteful to loyal colonists as the idea that Britain would voluntarily abdicate her pride of place among the nations. Their reading of history convinces them that they are in peaceful possession of their vast island-continent, simply because Nelson and Wellington defeated and overwhelmed the navies and armies of Napoleon. And in this light Lord Beaconsfield seemed a worthier successor of Pitt than Mr. ”