Arthur Patchett Martin

“ After the manful manner in which Sir Charles Dilke, a professed Free-trader, has dealt with the subject of Protection, no American or Australian need feel ashamed of what is regarded as so heterodox and illiberal a fiscal creed in Great Britain. Indubitably the Victorian public men, from Mr. Richard Heales to Sir Graham Berry, the present Agent-General in London who consummated the policy of Protection in the colony, were among the foremost leaders of the local democracy. Yet I can remember when almost every person removed from the class of artisans and labourers was in favour of Free-trade. ”

“ As a matter of mere abstract economic science, nobody can dispute the truth of free-trade. Not only, as Sir Charles Dilke points out, is it the cosmopolitan theory; but if the British Empire is an empire in anything but name, there should certainly be the freest interchange of commodities within its borders throughout the whole of its world-wide territory. ”

“ One need not go quite so far as that worthy old Victorian colonist who stoutly maintained that no one who did not firmly believe in democratic institutions had any right to live in Australia, Such a law would promote a very considerable exodus. But assuredly it seems to me that no one can be trusted to relate the annals, or trace the social and political evolution of Australia, who starts with an invincible prejudice against democracies. ”

“ It is, in fact, only another instance that the anti-popular party in Victoria has often been the anti-patriotic one. Let us by all means frankly admit that colonial democracy, like every other human movement or institution, is full of imperfection. But let us at the same time make some approach to fair-dealing and justice. What is called "society" has perhaps grown to some extent alienated from politics in these young democracies. ”

“ Unconsciously we have all come to recognise that George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were as great leaders of what Dr. Freeman calls the "English folk movement," as any in the mere insular story from Alfred the Great, to Arthur, Duke of Wellington. It is only by so reading the history of our race that we can ever comprehend the great part we have played, and are still destined to play, in the history of the world. ”

“ This is, after all, the strong side of what I must call a "Conservative democracy"—like that of Victoria. In such a community almost every man is actively on the side of law and order. When Mr. James Service returned to Melbourne from the Colonial Conference, he was naturally asked what he thought of the Trafalgar Square riots. Although an active politician, desirous of remaining in favour with the colonial working classes, the Victorian ex-Premier at once launched out into hearty laudations of the conduct of Sir Charles Warren and the police. ”

“ Kilda has said, that politics and politicians, and all men in this country, are rotten to the core. I am willing to stand on that issue. If the people of this country will not support us in our endeavours to purify Parliament and to maintain the authority of Parliament, why then, sir, let corruption be established, and let every man who respects himself retire from public life. ”

“ Service, but perhaps even stronger with Sir Graham Berry and other popular leaders of Australia, I have noticed the same disposition to trust in the general good sense of the people, or, in cases of emergency, where the masses seem misdirected, to speak out without equivocation what must be at the time the most unpalatable truths. ”

“ Finch-Hatton, who has a politician's instincts and aspirations, were to make his home in Victoria, he would find his way very readily into the Legislative Assembly, and would soon regard the public movements of the colony in a very different light from that of the small and publicly impotent section of colonial society with which, like most aristocratic visitors, he appears, almost exclusively, to have come in contact, and from whom he has formed his ideas, if not of Queensland, at least of Victorian politics. ”

“ To my mind it is largely, though I do not say altogether, the fault of that small section of wealthy colonists, who arrogate superiority over their neighbours, purely on account of their bank balance. In no place is real superiority more readily appreciated than in the colonies, but nowhere is the counterfeit article more quickly detected and exposed. It was in Victoria that the biting phrase "the wealthy lower orders" was first uttered. Go where you will, politics is a rough-and-tumble, and there are many refined persons in England who would be quite out of place in the House of Commons. ”

“ That men of ability and character are proscribed has been one of the charges brought against colonial democracy. For my part, I found gathered in Melbourne, at the University, at the Observatory, at the Botanical Gardens, and at the Government Offices, men of the highest scientific attainments, drawn from all parts of the world, and tempted to Australia by large salaries voted by the democracy. The statesmen of all the colonies are well worthy of the posts they hold. ”

“ As we have seen, the Greatest of Australian public men, and one who certainly was filled with Australian patriotism, favoured the formation of aristocratic, rather than democratic, institutions, for his own particular colony, New South Wales. Sir William Foster Stawell, whose Australian patriotism is quite as strong as Wentworth's, would have probably preferred an anti-democratic constitution fur Victoria. But these really great colonial anti-democrats were, after all, on this vital point of local patriotism, by no means typical of their class. ”

“ I have elsewhere, however, said enough on this point, as affecting the colonies.
In conclusion, I only ask the English reader to accept the situation as he finds it, and make the best of it. The democracies of Australia are far from perfect, but they cannot be sneered out of existence; and if we believe in the inherent vigour, veracity, and manliness of our race, they may yet be made important factors in our Empire, and sources of strength rather than of weakness to the mother-land. ”

“ I maintained, I remember, that the working classes could not be expected to support this heavy taxation very cheerfully; and that therefore a democracy might be at a severe disadvantage in the terrible "struggle for existence" against a despotically governed state. ”

“ On this particular point I was much impressed recently by reading a debate on a motion introduced on May 20th, 1869, by the present Judge Casey of Victoria, proposing to refer certain privileges of the Legislative Assembly to the decision of the Privy Council. [1] It was an especially unpleasant case, but in reading this suggestive debate, one may see how vigorously a democracy, through its leaders, may assert both its rights and its public conscience. ”

“ Government is at best a rude human contrivance, but the justification of colonial democracy broadly rests on the fact that the colonies could not be governed in accordance with their progressive needs either from Downing Street or by Colonial Office nominees located in the colonies. ”

“ If a fresh De Tocqueville could arise, and were to make a wide excursion to the Antipodes, he would find ample material for a new work on "Democracy in Australia," or rather, in "Australasia,"—for the adjacent Islands of New Zealand would furnish a most important section. The political philosopher on his travels would encounter seven self-governing democratic States, all claiming to be members of a world-wide empire whose nucleus is a Constitutional Monarchy with an hereditary House of Peers. To such a mind these British colonies would present a series of problems of surpassing fascination ”

“ The pioneer squatters were no doubt a very vigorous and picturesque body, but it is only a rightful social evolution that their place has been largely taken in the more favoured and settled parts of the continent by a much more numerous and equally worthy generation of farmers. It has often been pointed out that some of the legislative enactments, known as popular Land Acts, have been the means of handing over vast tracts of country in fee-simple to the identical "Squatter" class who were previously content to be Crown tenants. ”

“ Finch-Hatton, however, Sir Charles Dilke preferred to form his own estimate of Australian public men. If the impartial critic turns to the measures passed into law, or agitated for, by the democratic party, he will also find that the aim, even if the means be sometimes indefensible, has in every case been to make the colonies a permanent abiding-place for a happy, prosperous, and contented community. This was undeniably the intention of the popular struggle against the squatters for possession of the Crown Lands. ”

“ These figures are near enough for all practical purposes of comparison, and they certainly show democracy in a very favourable light. If, instead of this enormous expenditure on the education of the young, we saw these colonies, which are largely the outcome of a heterogeneous lower middle-class and working-class emigration, growing more and more careless as to the training of the coming generation, then we might give ear to the lamentations of the aristocratic Jeremiahs of our time. ”

“ It is to be regretted that such writers, when they expatiate pungently on the degradation of their countrymen, whether of republican America or of self-governing democratic Australia, receive a too-ready and sympathetic hearing in England. ”

“ When alluvial mining ceased to remunerate its eager votaries there was the spectacle of a large able-bodied, vigorous population, who, in the language of the pitiful London beggars, had "got no work to do." ”

“ The reason of the difference is that the colonial statesman is more in "touch" with the great mass of his fellow-countrymen, and therefore can afford to denounce in very plain terms any symptoms of national crime or public hysteria, which crafty or misguided men may be fostering to the peril of the community. ”

“ It is very evident that those who are wise in the next generation will see that their children are taught a mechanical trade, in addition to what will then be the universal acquirement of the three R's—for it may be that a handicraft will be almost as essential to every citizen in the future, as the capacity of common speech, or the power of locomotion. ”

“ That eminent New Zealand democrat set forth his opinions in an article called "Titles for Colonists," which was originally published in the Melbourne Review of July 1881. It is generally thought by that numerous class of persons who seem to acquire what they are pleased to regard as information from the comic journals, and who, for instance, dispose of the Darwinian theory by expatiating on the absurdity of the notion that man could have been descended from the monkey, that Sir Robert Stout, after writing such an article, subsequently stultified himself when he accepted a knighthood. ”

“ It was clearly necessary that industries of some kind should forthwith be established and fostered in the land. "When in Collingwood, the working man's suburb of Melbourne, now in itself a corporate city of twenty-five or thirty thousand inhabitants, it was announced that "free soup-kitchens" had been started for the poor, a mixed feeling of panic and indignation took possession of the people. ”

“ Here we see, throughout the entire group of colonies, the democratic or popular party determined, whatever the cost might be, that every child born in the territory should receive, free of cost to the parents, a sound elementary education. ”

“ It is a suggestive fact, and one which I think makes for the inevitable alliance of the English-speaking peoples who now claim so magnificent a portion of this world's estate, that the heroes of American history have already taken their place among the traditional heroes of the English-speaking world. ”

“ It is often noticeable that the opposing disputants are very fairly matched, but one feels in reviewing these debates that the men who proclaimed their belief in the colony deserved to prevail over those who decried it. ”

“ Of course all depends on whether the mass of the population really desire honesty in public affairs, and will support their representatives in endeavouring to secure it, or whether they are prepared to desert us, and will, in deserting us, prove, as I think the honourable and learned member for St. ”