Arthur Patchett Martin

“ Before entering upon this subject, I would warn my readers not to imagine, because they see the crudity or, if they will, the folly of this unknown colonial writer, whom I have treated as typical of the intelligent native Australian, that those to whom he more directly appeals will read his pages with their eyes. It is worse than idle for grown-up serious men to continue to play a game of political blind man's buff, when it is admitted on all hands that the relations between Great Britain and her colonies are in a tentative, if not unsatisfactory and even critical, condition. ”

“ Some of our would-be reformers propose that the colonies should send, in the ratio of their population, representatives to the existing House of Commons. Others would have a certain number of colonial peers in the House of Lords; while still another party would create a brand-new Imperial Parliament, composed of representatives of all or certain specified parts of the Empire, relegating to the House of Commons merely the domestic affairs of this portion of the British Islands. It is astonishing what nation-builders and nation-destroyers we all are with a pen and ink and a sheet of paper. ”

“ There is what is called a Federal Council, which Sir Henry Parkes describes in the spirit of Brown, the tragedian, gazing with undisguised contempt upon Smith's Hamlet, as "a phantom that pops up now and again at Hobart." So far the history of Australia presents a series of disintegrations, and the only successful attempt in the opposite direction has been effected in New Zealand, where the original provincial governments have been supplanted by a centralised authority, not, however, without the active opposition of a most influential section of politicians. ”

“ The coming Australian is to enter upon the stage freed from all the wretched impedimenta of the historic past. His advent is to mark an entirely new era. When he takes over his patrimony, Australia, from his father, the "foreigner," the astonished Old World will see something very like a new revelation upon this earth. ”

“ The great increase in the naval power of the countries of Europe, the enormous increase in the means of communication, place the colonies practically so much nearer Europe. The improvements of modern science, and especially of telegraphic science, aid the concentration of force upon a single point. All these things have brought the distant lands which belong to the Empire in various parts of the world within the sphere of possible aggression. Do not so misinterpret my words as to imagine that I conceive any aggression likely or probable on the part of those who wield power in Europe ”

“ In one of his charming after-dinner speeches recently delivered in Australia, the Earl of Carnarvon, pleasantly paraphrasing the Laureate, was good enough to say that, "if fifty years of Europe are, in point of development and expansion, worth an unlimited era of Cathay, then I say that ten years in these great Australasian colonies match fifty years of Europe." ”

“ It is a singular fact that those of the younger generation of colonists, who are to-day loudly inveighing against any scheme of Imperial federation, are simply re-echoing the outworn traditions of Downing Street. ”

“ Knowing, therefore, that the interest of the few is the robbery of the many, the Australian will sternly repress log-rolling and swindling, and will only vote for the man who will represent general, and not individual and clique, interests. He will be influenced only by a public-spirited desire for the advancement of his native land, and not for the advancement of any particular statesman or party. The legislation of the future will be the reflex of educated patriotic electors, and they will only join one party, and that will carry the Australian flag and keep step to Australian music. ”

“ Would we keep together our world-wide Empire, we may learn something from that most venerable of human institutions, the Roman Church, which Hobbes so well described as "the ghost of the Roman Empire." ”

“ He asserted that instead of three separate costly Civil Services, one could be established, which, by providing really high prizes to exceptionally capable men, would attract the best-trained intellects both of Australia and the mother country; and at a saving of a quarter of a million of money. He grounded his reasons for this by no means violent change on the highest considerations of statecraft. Could these three colonies be welded into "one powerful British state," he argued, "there would be a noble field for statesmanship, if the statesman could be found to occupy it. ”

“ No one but a colonist who has resided in a remote province of the Empire, before and after the laying down of the ocean cable, can realise the difference. In all essential respects the resident in Australia or New Zealand is as well informed of what transpires at Westminster as though he were a denizen of London itself. ”

“ Have the grand gifts which the fast-vanishing generation of 'foreigners' will bequeath to their sons dropped from the clear Australian skies? The gifts of art and science, of learning and culture, of commerce and manufactures, of ripening harvests and glittering ores ”

“ Lord Salisbury has told us the effect of modern scientific agencies in exposing outlying colonies to the attacks of powerful but no longer sufficiently remote enemies. This fact has the immediate effect of compelling us, as it were, to huddle closer together for mutual shelter. In other ways, thanks to the cable, it is something more than a mere post-prandial phrase that Australia is as much a part of the Empire as Yorkshire. ”

“ This essay, in my judgment, is much more worthy of the consideration of grown men, whether English or colonial, than is the cheap rhodomontade of "Australia for the Australians." If the writer may be accepted in any sense as a mouth-piece of the rising (or should it be arisen?) generation, then the colonial-born voters, into whose hands such questions as those involved in Imperial Federation will be placed, are very emphatically opposed to any scheme that will bind them into closer legislative union with England. ”

“ If so, what a vastly improved position he would occupy as the man actually chosen by the accredited representatives of the colony, over whose destiny he would preside, and not by the English official, whom so loyal a man as Mr. Higinbotham was on one occasion compelled to stigmatise as the "foreign nobleman." [5] Such a mode, too, of choosing a Governor would excite interest and attention in every part of the Empire, and the individual who attained to this supreme post would rank as a veritable colonial, perhaps Imperial, potentate, instead of being a mere highly-paid Downing Street official ”

“ The only link now binding England to these great self-governing colonies, which may be described as a link of dependence, rather than one of fraternal alliance, is that of the Imperial officer, known as the Governor. Could not an immediate reform be instituted with regard to the method of his appointment? At present he is purely the nominee of the Secretary of State for the time being. Why should not the colonists, under the direct supervision of the Crown, have a voice in the selection of their chief official? ”

“ It is a magnificent period in the history of humanity, a very golden age; an age of glorious innovations, full of reforms, inventions, and revolutions, when men are emerging from darkness into light, from night into day. ”

“ The North American, like the Australian colonies, and like the Cape, have very naturally renounced all consideration of English interests, and renounced and resented every exercise of English power, so often as they conflicted, in the slightest degree, with colonial interests or sentiments. ”

“ But surely this very initial incongruity in the matter of new-world nomenclature should have taught him the absurdity of imagining that it is possible to establish in Australia or elsewhere an entirely new form of civilisation. The ever-lengthening, though often imperceptible, link that connects all the ages can never be broken. ”

“ What has been accomplished is splendid, but what has to be done is sublime; and if the colonies would not lag behind in the race, their destinies must be controlled by men saturated with the comprehension of their sacred duties, and actuated by a burning desire for the elevation of their fellows, so that the race will receive an impetus in the struggle for perfection more powerful than anything it has yet received. ”

“ As long as the political sea is smooth, the ship of State rides bravely, but should an unexpected squall arise, the crew may be taken at a disadvantage. In other words, the relation between England and her Colonies is one purely of haphazard; we do not steer,—we drift.
In his felicitous speech at the opening of the Colonial Conference in Downing Street, the Marquis of Salisbury showed himself cognisant of this prevailing condition of the colonial mind ”

“ Englishmen must notice the excellent effect produced (even though subsequent "party" manoeuvres wrecked his labours in America) by sending on a colonial mission a statesman of first-rate rank like Mr. Chamberlain. More than anything else it makes the colonists feel that they are of some account in the reckoning. It diverts, as it were, the public mind of the Empire to them, and they become for the time being the centre of attraction. This is exactly what is wanted as a check to the over- centralisation of London. ”

“ Surely this young Victorian forgets that to the unwearying energy, the strong self-reliance, the clear heads and stout arms of her early settlers, his country owes the very wealth and culture of which he boasts, and to the growth of which he and his fellows have yet contributed so little! ”

“ The rising generation has been nurtured under a new and dry light, mental and moral, while the old and decaying one was forced in a hothouse of falsity. Evolution promises that we shall be better thinkers and workers than our predecessors, and the dispassionate observer must admit that my proposition that Australia will never be properly governed till she is ruled by native-born (sic) Australians has after all more of a real than a hypothetical basis. ”

“ Under the present system, it is a mere matter of chance who is sent out, and the most politic thing for a Colonial Office nominee to do, whatever his individual capacity may be, is to transform himself into a gentlemanly cipher. ”

“ The great mass of the people are not unmindful of the laborious, and often disinterested, services of these performers on the public stage, but they sometimes grow weary of all this mouthing and iteration, and pay but scant heed to the trumpetings forth about new pieces and new players. ”

“ Can they for a moment realise what it all means? Take the case of Australia, with a kindred population, contiguous territories, and interests in common: it has, so far, been found quite beyond the skill of their most influential statesmen to federate any two of the colonies. Almost ten years ago Sir Henry Parkes proposed to establish what he called an "Australian nation," merely by federating New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia—thus simplifying the problem by entirely eliminating Queensland and Western Australia ”

“ Put all these things together, and you will see that the colonies have a very real and genuine interest in the shield which their Imperial connection throws over them, and they have a ground for joining with us in making the defence of the Empire effective, a ground which is not purely sentimental, which does not rest merely upon their attachment to this country, but which is based on the most solid and reasonable foundations of self-interest and security. ”

“ Then will our destinies be in the hands of men who will be influenced only by a sincere and creditable amor patriæ, whose united cry may be earnestly resounded from York to Otway, from Perth to Brisbane—Australia for the Australians! ”

“ Guided by truth, they tread down the corn of established opinions, separating the chaff from the grain, appropriating the portion their judgment approves, and rejecting whatever savours of darkness and ignorance. ”

“ Australian, like the greatest of living poets in his youth, had, as we have seen, "dipped into the future far as human eye could see;" and perhaps, if one may be allowed to say so, somewhat further. The old Pioneer, after the pathetic manner of men who have turned the solemn side of fifty, prefers to look in the opposite direction. ”

“ Common sense and education invite them to think freely for themselves; and they are accustomed to boldly investigate everything—past, present, and future. Nothing is too sacred merely because it is hoary and fossilised. ”

“ Our modes of thought are becoming better every year, and we are discarding superstition and employing science, because we are accustomed to pass established opinions through the alembic of reason which a scientific age has moulded for us. ”

“ But after all, this "foreign pressure" has not been continuous enough to weld the Australian colonies into a single dominion. A kind of loose Bund has been established between Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania, and the still inchoate Western Australia; the colonies of New South Wales, South Australia, [3] and New Zealand remaining aloof. ”

“ It is this succession of mournful spectacles which has abated the enthusiasm of generous natures. Men no longer believe, like the Alcalde, that Jeremy Bentham, or any one else, could invent equitable laws capable of removing the ills of the world. ”

“ Our intellects are 'stunted as the feet of a Chinese dame,' and, says our cruel critic, 'despite their time-honoured boast of absolute freedom, many of our fathers actually did not know what freedom was till they came hither'! ”

“ Hence, as soon as a political scheme is mooted that does not deal with an immediate pressing necessity, no one pays the slightest heed to it. This condition of things has its advantages, but also its drawbacks. ”