appreciated by Australian statesmen. The effusiveness with which they
dwell upon it is probably more sincere than even that which is displayed
by politicians in England, America, or France, when they chant the
praises of the multitude. Australians are as sanguine in their temper
now as Americans were in the days before the clouds of Slavery and
Secession had begun to darken their sky.
XXII. POLITICAL PARTY IN AUSTRALIA.
Although the Constitution says no word about political parties, the fact
that it contemplates a party system is written over it in bold
characters. The sages of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 neither
intended nor expected that the scheme they devised would fall into the
hands of parties. Indeed they had a touching faith, dispelled as soon as
Washington retired from the scene, that the electors who were to be
chosen to elect the President would select the best man in the nation
irrespective of his political ties. The Swiss, strange as it may seem to
men of English or Anglo-American race, have succeeded in keeping their
Executive, elected though it is by the Chambers, out of party politics
altogether, nor do parties dominate the legislature and colour the
public life of the nation as in America and England. But Government of
the English ‘Cabinet type’ is essentially party Government, that is to
say, it has been so hitherto both in England and wherever else it has
been tried, and no one has yet shown how it can be made to work
otherwise.
In America the great parties are younger than the Constitution, which
may be said to have created them. In England they are older than Cabinet
Government proper, being practically contemporaneous in their rise with
that very rudimentary form of the Cabinet which began to emerge in the
time of King Charles II. In Australia every colony has had such active
and skilfully-organized parties that no one doubts but what the Federal
Legislature will find its first Ministry forthwith provided with a
competent Opposition. It is generally believed that the tariff will
furnish the first, and for some time the main, ground of party division,
for the new Government must begin by providing itself with an adequate
revenue; the chief part of that revenue must be raised by indirect
taxation, and the issue of Free Trade _versus_ Protection has for years
past been a burning one in the largest Colonies.
I have observed that the Australian scheme contemplates a party system
to work it. But what sort of a party system? Obviously one in which
there are two parties only, each cohesive, each prepared to replace its
antagonist in the Executive. Such was the party system of England till
the present generation. Such has been the party system of the United
States. Exceptions indeed there have been, such as the Know-Nothing
party in 1852, the Greenback party in 1876, the Populist party which
arose in 1889, and is not quite extinct now (February 1901). In the
United States the power of the two great organizations is so vast, and
the cost of creating a new party so deterrent, that a third organization
seldom appears, and if it appears, presently disappears. But in France
there have been and are several parliamentary groups, which frequently
change their attitude towards one another, sometimes combining to
support a Ministry, sometimes falling asunder and leaving it to perish,
because one group alone was not sufficient to sustain it. Hence the
lives of Cabinets have been short, and would have been still shorter but
for the fact that an imminent peril to republican government itself has
sometimes compelled the various republican groups to hold together. In
Britain the same difficulty became acute from 1880 onwards, as the Irish
Nationalists consolidated themselves in a distinct Third Party; and it
may at any moment create serious embarrassment. It exists in Germany
also, and in the Reichsrath of the Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian
Monarchy. Now in several of the Australian Colonial Parliaments a Labour
party has recently arisen, which, keeping itself independent of the two
older parties, can throw its weight on one or the other side and
endanger the stability of Cabinets. Should this phenomenon reappear in
the Parliament of the Commonwealth, it will complicate still further a
position which the co-ordinate powers of Senate and House make
complicated enough already[233].
-----
Footnote 233:
Since these lines were written, the phenomenon has reappeared, for at
the first elections, held in the spring of 1901, of the Senate and
House, the Labour party obtained more than one-fifth of the seats in
each House.
-----
XXIII. POLITICAL ISSUES LIKELY TO ARISE
IN AUSTRALIA.
The mention of parties suggests another question, the last I shall
attempt to discuss, viz. the lines on which the political life of
Australia is likely to move under her new Constitution. It is a topic on
which little will be said by any one who remembers how seldom great
constitutional changes have been followed by the results prophesied at
the time. The Reform Bill of 1832 in Britain, the Civil War in the
United States, the union of Italy under the dynasty of Savoy, not to
speak of the French Revolutions of 1789 and 1848, all brought forth
fruits very different from those predicted by some of the most judicious
and unbiassed contemporary observers. Even the extension of the suffrage
and redistribution of seats effected in Britain in 1884-5 were followed
by a shifting of the balance of party strength exactly the opposite of
that which the shrewdest party politicians had expected. But without
attempting forecasts, one may try to indicate certain conditions likely
to affect the development of Australian national and political life
under the new form which this Constitution gives it.
First let us ask what are the controversies likely to occupy the nation
and to supply a basis for national parties?
Taking one country with another, it will be found that the questions on
which men have grouped themselves into parties may be classed under five
heads, viz.:—
1. Questions of Race, such as those which have contributed to distract
Ireland, which to-day trouble the Austrian Monarchy and (as respects the
Poles) the Prussian Monarchy, which exist, though at present not acute,
in Canada, and which are painfully acute in South Africa.
2. Questions of religion, now generally less formidable than they once
were, yet embittering disputes regarding education in many modern
countries.
3. Questions relating to foreign policy, whether as to the general lines
on which it should be conducted, or as to the attitude to be held
towards particular States at any given moment.
4. Questions regarding the distribution of political power within the
nation itself.
5. Questions of an economic or economico-social kind, _e.g._ regarding
the disposal of land in public hands or its tenure in private hands,
regarding the conditions of labour, regarding taxation and finance, the
policy of Protection or Free Trade, the policy of progressive imposts,
the propriety of assisting particular industries or particular classes
out of public funds, whether national or local. Some of these may seem
to be rather social than economic, but it will be found upon scrutiny
that it is their economic aspect, _i.e._ their tendency to take money
from or give money to some class in the community, that makes them bases
for party combination. A purely social question seldom assumes great
political significance.
(1, 2) Applying this classification to Australia we shall find that the
first two sets of questions are absent. All the people are of
practically the same race. None are animated by any religious passion,
although controversies have sometimes arisen over theological teaching
in State schools.
(3) Questions of foreign policy do not, strictly speaking, come within
the scope of the Commonwealth Parliament, because they belong to the
mother country. Nevertheless, it cannot be doubted that the Parliament
will from time to time interest itself in them, especially as regards
the isles of the Pacific and of the Eastern Archipelago, and will give
forcible expression to its views should any crisis arrive. One can well
imagine that the question of the attitude which the Commonwealth should
assume, or urge the mother country to assume, towards Germany or France,
or Holland, or even towards China or Japan or the United States, when
any of these Powers may be taking action in the Western Pacific, might
give rise to political contention.
(4) As respects the distribution of political power and the structure of
the Federal Government, Australia is so democratic already that it
cannot go much further. It will doubtless, however, be proposed to
extend to women in all the States that right of voting at Commonwealth
elections which they already enjoy in South Australia and Western
Australia, under the local law, or to apply more widely the institution
of the direct popular vote; or to amend the Constitution in some point
which will raise an issue between the more radical and the more
conservative sections of opinion. That questions of constitutional
amendment have played so small a part in American politics may be
attributed to the extreme difficulty of securing the majorities required
for altering the Constitution. In Australia the process will be far
easier. The history of the United States during the first seventy years
of the Constitution suggests that the question of the respective rights
of the Federation and of the States may furnish a prominent and
persistent issue. This is quite possible, for in Federations there is a
tendency for many controversies of various kinds to connect themselves
with, or to raise afresh, controversies regarding the true construction
of the Federal instrument as respects the powers which it assigns to the
Nation and to the component communities.
(5) It is however questions of the economic order that are likely to
occupy, more than any others, the minds and energies of Australian
statesmen. The tariff is a practically inexhaustible topic, because
apart from the general issue between a Protective and Free Trade policy,
the particular imports to be taxed and the particular duties to be
imposed will furnish matter for debates that can hardly have finality,
seeing that circumstances change, and that the financial needs of the
Government will increase. It need hardly be said that in a new country
like Australia direct taxation is difficult to collect and highly
unpopular, so that larger recourse will be had to customs and excise
than orthodox economists could justify in Europe. The financial
relations between the Commonwealth and the States will be another
fertile source of controversy. So may the regulation of the railways,
which the Commonwealth seems likely to take over. So will the
arrangements for securing the respective rights of different States as
regards both irrigation and the navigation of the rivers, practically
the only rivers of the Continent, which intersect the three
south-eastern colonies. Among the labour questions likely to arise, one
problem, much before the minds of Australians, may be found to cause
difficulties in its details if not in its general principle, viz. the
exclusion of immigrants of coloured race, Chinese, Japanese, Malays, and
Indian coolies. The white labourers of the temperate colonies have been
strongly opposed to the admission of such strangers, but the planters of
the tropical north, who have used the labour of Pacific islanders on
their sugar estates, take a different view of the case.
Some may think that the obvious line of party division will be found to
be that which ranges the four smaller and the two larger States into
opposite camps. If this should happen, which may well be doubted, it
will be owing to a coincidence of economic interests, and not to the
mere fact that the strength of one set of States lies in the House, that
of the other in the Senate. The two largest States, New South Wales and
Victoria, have hitherto been conspicuously divergent in their financial
policy. In America, though the small States fought hard against the
large ones in the Convention of 1787, the distinction has never since
that date possessed any permanent political significance.
If parties form themselves on any geographical lines, the line will more
probably be one between the tropical and the temperate regions. These
tropical regions are at present much less populous and wealthy than is
the temperate south-east corner of the Continent. They will doubtless
increase both in wealth and in population, but as the strong sun forbids
out-door labour to white men, the population enjoying political rights
cannot, for generations to come, be a large one.
XXIV. POSSIBLE ENTRANCE OF NEW STATES.
The existing situation may be so materially affected by the entrance of
new States that one naturally asks what are the prospects that new
States will be admitted. As the whole Continent is already divided among
the five existing States, new ones can come into being only by carving
up the three larger of these. There has already been talk of dividing
Queensland into two or perhaps three States. Others might be formed out
of the now sparsely peopled regions of the north and north-west, when
they have become more thickly inhabited. How fast the process of
colonization will advance in these regions will depend upon what
engineering science may be found able to do for the more arid tracts in
the way of storing rain-water and raising it from deep wells, while
something will depend on the disposition of the Federal Government to
spend money for that purpose. Nor is another element to be overlooked.
Vast as is the mineral wealth already known to exist in the explored
parts of Australia, it may be equalled by that which exists in regions
which have received no thorough geological examination. Should mines
begin to be worked in the arid tracts, an additional motive would be
given for the provision of water supplies there, for the existence of a
population furnishing markets would stimulate men to develop the
capacities of the soil for ranching and even for tillage. These
possibilities show how many factors hitherto undetermined may go to
moulding the political future of the country. The increase of population
in regions now thinly peopled would either make the four smaller States,
or some of them, the equals of the larger, or would, more probably, lead
to the creation of new States, some of them with a character different
from that of the two which now command a decisive majority in the House
of Representatives. As the settlement of the Mississippi Valley changed
American politics, so a filling up of large parts of the interior and
north of Australia, unlikely as this now appears, might affect her
constitutional growth in ways at which we can now only guess.
At present not only these tropical regions, but also the settled parts
of Western Australia are separated by vast uninhabited spaces from the
populous south-east corner of the continent. Hence just as in Canada an
Intercolonial Railway to connect Nova Scotia and New Brunswick with
Quebec and Ontario was provided for in the Constitution of 1867, and
just as the construction of the great transcontinental Canadian Pacific
line enabled Manitoba and British Columbia to become effective members
of the Federation, so a line of railway from east to west across
Australia, as well as the completion of the line, already partly
constructed, from the south to the north, are among the political needs
of the Commonwealth, and might do much to weld its people into an even
more united nation.
One community remains to be mentioned whose geographical position
towards Australia recalls the saying of Grattan that while the Ocean
forbade Ireland to be politically severed from Britain, the Sea forbade
an incorporating union. It has been hoped that New Zealand would enter
the Federation, and she has herself seriously considered whether she
ought to do so. With a healthy climate, a soil generally well watered,
and an area not much less than that of the British Isles, New Zealand
has evidently a great future before her. The population, now between
700,000 and 800,000, has tripled within the last thirty years; and the
level of personal comfort and well-being is as high as anywhere in the
world. Her accession would give further strength to the Federal
Commonwealth. But New Zealand, as one of her statesmen observed, has
twelve hundred reasons against union with Australia, for she is
separated from the nearest part of Australia by twelve hundred miles of
stormy sea, a distance more than half of that which divides Ireland from
Newfoundland. She may therefore think that some sort of permanent league
with Australia, for the purposes of combined naval defence and joint
action in external questions of common concern, would conform better to
her outlying position than would participation in a Legislature which
must be mainly occupied with the affairs of Australia. Of the subjects
assigned by the Constitution to the Commonwealth Parliament, there are
several in which, because purely Australian, New Zealand would have no
interest, some also with regard to which she could legislate better for
herself than the Commonwealth could legislate for her, inasmuch as her
economic and social conditions are not the same as those of Australia.
An illustration is furnished by the difference between the native races
in the two countries. The Australian aborigines, one of the most
backward branches of the human family, are obviously unfit for the
exercise of any political functions. They are not permitted to vote in
any colony, and the Constitution provides that in determining the number
of representatives to be allotted to a State they shall not be reckoned
among its population. But the Maoris of New Zealand are an intelligent
folk, to whom New Zealand has given the suffrage, and who are now on
excellent terms with their white neighbours. It would no doubt be
possible for the Commonwealth Parliament to legislate differently for
them and for the ‘black fellows’ of Australia; but their dissimilar
character shows the difference of the problems which arise in the two
countries. New Zealand has however an interest in obtaining free access
to the Australian markets, and her final decision as to entering the
Federation may be influenced by the commercial policy which the larger
country pursues[234].
-----
Footnote 234:
While these pages were passing through the press, a Commission
appointed in New Zealand to consider the question has reported
strongly against her entrance into the Australian Federation.
-----
In this changeful world, no form of government ever remains the same
during a long series of years, and no Federation, however strictly the
rights of its members may be secured by a Rigid Constitution, can
continue to maintain exactly the same balance of powers between the
Nation and the States. I have already expressed the opinion that the
tendency is in Australia likely to be rather towards consolidation than
towards a relaxation of the Federal bond, because not only national
sentiment but economic influences also will work in that direction. Much
however may depend on a factor still unpredictable, the relations
between Australia, together with the British Empire generally, and the
other Powers which are interested in the Western Pacific. Nothing does
so much to draw together a people already homogeneous as the emergence
of issues which threaten, or result in, a struggle against foreign
States. The sentiment of internal unity is accentuated. Public attention
is diverted from domestic controversies. Powers are willingly yielded to
the Executive which would in days of peace be refused. The consequences
may be good or evil—they have sometimes been in the long run evil—but
either way they alter the character of the government. They may even
give a new direction to its policy, as the United States has recently,
and quite unexpectedly, discovered.
XXV. FUTURE RELATIONS OF THE AUSTRALIAN
COMMONWEALTH TO BRITAIN.
Australia however is not a State standing alone in the world, but a
member of the British Empire, so we cannot close an examination of her
Constitution without asking whether the union of her Colonies will
affect her relations to the mother country.
When the first Convention to frame a Federal Constitution assembled in
1891, most Englishmen supposed that a Federated Australia would soon
aspire to complete independence. Australian statesmen saw deeper, and
predicted that the formation from the several Colonies of an Australian
Nation would tend not to loosen, but rather to draw closer the ties that
unite the people to Great Britain. So far as can be judged from the
course of Australian opinion during the past ten years, this has been
the result. There were at first some who advocated Federation as a means
to independence. But they soon desisted, overborne by a different
current. The same National feeling through which Federalism triumphed
seems to have deepened the sense of unity with other members of the
British race. And possibly that suspicion which colonies are apt to feel
of a sort of patronage on the part of the mother country, and which
sometimes disposes them to be self-assertive, may have vanished as they
came to realize that the old country was proud of them and wished to
treat them not only as a daughter but as an equal. Neither do they,
democrats as they are, harbour distrust of a monarchy, or deem their
freedom in any way hampered by it. The love for republicanism in the
abstract, though far stronger in Continental Europe than in England, was
everywhere a force in the first half of the nineteenth century. It has
faded away in the second half throughout the British world, because the
solid substance of freedom has been secured, because the old mischiefs
of monarchical government have reappeared in republics, because men’s
minds have begun to be occupied with economic and social rather than
with purely political questions. The fact that the British Crown is
titular head of the Australian Commonwealth will not render the working
of the Constitution less truly popular, any more than has befallen in
Canada, a somewhat less democratic country. So far as the internal
politics of Australia are concerned, she will take her own course,
scarcely affected by her connexion with England. But the fact that she
is, and seems likely to remain, a part of the British Empire, sharing in
the enterprises and conflicts and responsibilities of that vast body, is
a fact of the highest moment for her future and for the future of the
world. Still more momentous might her relation to the Empire become
should any scheme be devised for giving the self-governing Colonies of
Britain a share in the financial liability for common defence, together
with a voice in the determination of a common foreign policy. The
difficulties of constructing any constitutional machinery for this
purpose are obvious, yet perhaps not insurmountable. Should any such
arrangement be ever reached, it will probably be reached through some
crisis in the history of the Empire itself.
Sixty years ago it was generally believed that as soon as each British
self-governing colony had become conscious of its strength, it would
naturally desire, and could not be refused, its independence. But the
last sixty years have brought with them many favouring conditions; and
among these, one of which no one then thought, the long reign of a
sovereign whose personal character, by its purity, simplicity and
kindliness, won such reverence and affection, not only for herself, but
also for the ancient institutions at the head of which she stood, that
the prolongation of her life may be reckoned among the causes which have
kept these far-off lands a part of the British realm and have given its
actual form to the Commonwealth of Australia.
END OF VOL. 1
OXFORD
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
BY HORACE HART, M.A.
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
------------------------------------------------------------------------