A Short History of Australia - The Problems of the Rivers Experienced by Early Explorers

A SHORT HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA

Part 5

THE PROBLEM OF THE RIVERS

The discovery of a practical route across the Blue Mountains opened the interior of Australia, first to exploration and secondly to settlement. Often the early settler was himself an explorer; for, whilst the names of some men who undertook long and hazardous journey with the specific object of investigation stand out on the records of history, there were hundreds who contributed to the work of discovery by the process of seeking for good pasturage and water-courses. A great void continent wherein there was not a yard of cultivated land beyond the limits of the small east-coast colony and its few offshoots, awaited revelation. that it was a continent was now known; Flinders had shattered the theory that it was a group of islands. but little more than that was known till after 1813. An area of 2,983,200 square miles, full of incalculable possibilities, lay, as it had lain for an eternity, remote and unavailable, the inviolate sanctuary of 'cenotaphs of species dead elsewhere.'

Early image of Australian kangaroos

George Evans, the Deputy Surveyor-General, showed what might be expected when, following up the path cleared by Blaxland, Lawson, and Wentworth, he discovered the Macquarie and Lachlan Rivers watering the rich Bathurst Plains. In 1815 the town of Bathurst was founded, the first inland town in Australia. governor Macquarie utilised convict labour to construct a good road across the mounts to this new centre of activity. From this time commenced a series of explorations which rapidly revealed the inland geography of the continent. the first important name in the story is that of John Oxley. He was a naval officer who had secured the Surveyor-Generalship on the recommendation of Flinders, and who, being young and energetic, was not content to confine himself to his Sydney office, but desired to take the lead in discovery. The problem to which he directed his attention was the course of the two rivers which had been named after the Governor, the Lachlan and the Macquarie. They rose in the Blue Mountains; Evans had traced them for a few miles; they ran westerly; but whither? It took over twenty years fully to discover that these, and a wonderful spread of watercourses of which they formed part, were contributors to the immense basin of the Murray, which, with its principal tributary the Darling, makes one of the great river-systems of the world.

On his journey of 1817 Oxley followed the windings of the Lachlan for hundreds of miles over a dead level plain, through shallow, reedy lagoons, and finally to a point where the river became a succession of stagnant pools leading to a mere damp depression in the earth. The volume of water which had borne hiss boats in the upper reaches had been sucked up by the spongy soil before it reached the Murrumbidgee. Oxley had, in fact, made an astonished acquaintance with that strange phenomenon of Australia, where nature starts many a fine river but gives it no firm channel wherein to flow, so that the water evaporates from the intense heat of the plains, or percolates into the earth and perhaps helps to fill those subterranean cauldrons of rock which modern pastoralists have learnt to tap with artesian bores. In the watershed of the Macquarie, which was explored after the baffling adventures on the Lachlan, Oxley found 'a country of running waters, on every hill a spring and in every valley a rivulet.' The prospects were so inviting that he led a second expedition to investigate this river in 1818. But here again a broad, deep, vigorously flowing stream flattered the travellers at the beginnings of their journey, and mocked them by disappearing after carrying their boats for about a hundred and fifty miles. It flowed over a great plain, maintained its current through a chain of sprawling pools, and then, as Oxley recorded, 'without any previous change in the breadth, depth, and rapidity of the stream, and when I was sanguine in his expectation of soon entering the long-sought-for lake, it all at once eluded our further pursuit by spreading at all points from north-west to north-east over the plains of reed that surrounded us, the river decreasing in depth from upwards of twenty feet to less than five feet and flowing over a bottom of tenacious blue mud.'

Sydney, Australia

On his return journey to Sydney across the Liverpool Plains, Oxley and his party crossed twelve rivers, including he Castlereagh and the Namoi (or Peel). the whole of them had their origin on the west side of the mountains, and flowed inland. What became of them on occasions when their channels carried a full flood of water through their entire length, instead of losing it on the way, was still an unsolved enigma. Oxley, who had been accompanied by Allan Cunningham, the botanist, and by Evans, had completed the longest land journey yet achieved in Australia, a very adventurous and difficult place of work, much of it in rough country, all of it in country previously untravelled by Europeans. The discovery of these rich, well-watered plains beyond the mountains opened a new realm. It was now certain that for 500 miles west of Sydney there was land where great flocks and herds could pasture and large communities of people could thrive. From this time the attitude of the British government towards free settlement in Australia changed. Before the journeys of Evans and Oxley the official disposition had not been encouraging. New South Wales was a penal colony first and foremost, and, as we have seen, Macquarie during his long governorship cared far more about the welfare of the convicts and emancipists than about free colonists. He frankly disliked what he called 'gentlemen settlers,' who wanted concessions and were often vexatiously critical. He grumbled that it had become a constant practice 'for persons who wish to get rid of some troublesome connections to obtain permission from the Secretary of State's office for their being allowed to come out here.' Let them stay in England; he did not want them. The Government in England, too, required 'satisfactory testimonials and recommendations from persons of known respectability' before granting permission to persons to emigrate to New South Wales.

But the discoveries on the far side of the mountains changed the point of view entirely. As soon as the news reached England a fresh policy was inaugurated. The Government not only threw down the barriers but began to advertise the attractions of New South Wales as a field for immigration. Newspaper and magazine articles frequently appeared which enlarged upon the opportunities presented by the wonderful, new, unoccupied dominion, where land grants could be obtained so easily and where a small capital would secure for a man a greater stretch of broad acres than were owned by many a prosperous English squire. A new era had dawned. In 1818 Lord Sidmouth said in the House of Commons, 'the dread of transportation had almost entirely subsided, and had been succeeded by a desire to emigrate to New South Wales.' Proofs of the change were of frequent occurrence. The emigrant ship as well as the convict transport became familiar in Port Jackson. Australia came to be looked upon as a land of hope and promise instead of as an abode of despair. this great and striking difference was made by the discovery of the plains across the Blue Mountains. The inflow of immigrants necessitated a change of policy in the classification of convicts. It was evidently desirable to keep Sydney as free as possible from characters who would be likely to give trouble. consequently it was desirable to find a place along the coast where an establishment might be formed for the handling of bad cases.

Sydney Harbour Bridge (under construction)

In search of such a place, John Oxley in 1823 went north in the Mermaid. He examined Port Curtis, but did not think it suitable. On his return he anchored at Moreton Bay, and there, to his great surprise, met a white man named Pamphlet, who for several weeks had been living with a tribe of aboriginals. Pamphlet had been one of a boat's crew who had been blown out to sea and wrecked on Moreton Island. One of his four companions had died of thirst, a second had started to tramp to Sydney, whilst the third, Finnegan, was at the time when Oxley met Pamphet out hunting with the chief of the aboriginal tribe, who had treated the white men with great kindness. On the following day Oxley met Finnepan. From these two men he learned of the existence of a large river falling into Moreton Bay. they had crossed it, and were the discoverers of it. Oxley, guided by Finnegan, examined it for some miles from the mouth, and, congratulating himself on the finding of the largest fresh-water river on the east coast of New South Wales, named it the Brisbane after the Governor.

In the following year, 1824, was founded upon the banks of the Brisbane a new colony expressly for the punishment of convicts who, since they had been in New South Wales, had been convicted of further crimes and sentenced to transportation for them. In 1825 the river was explored for 150 miles by Major Lockyer, who showed how fertile was the soil in the interior. 'Nothing,' he wrote in his journal, 'can possibly excel the fine rich country we are now in.' A touch of humanity in Major Lockyer's journal deserves remembrance. He had maintained friendly relations with aboriginals whom he met, and, on taking his departure, desired to purchase a handsome puppy which one of them had in his arms. 'I offered a small axe for it. His companion urged him to take it, and he was about to do so when he looked at his dog, and the animal licked his face, which settled the business. He shook his head, determined to keep it. I tried him afterwards with handkerchiefs of glaring colours and other things, but it would not do - he would not part with his dog. I gave him, however, the axe and the handkerchief.'

Early in 1824, governor Brisbane, desiring to obtain information about the country to the south of Sydney -- that is, the part now known as Victoria - conceived the strange idea of landing a party of convicts near Wilson's Promontory or Cape Howe, providing them with equipment for a long journey, and directing them to make the best of their way to the shores of Port Jackson. If they arrived safely they were to receive 'suitable rewards and indulgences.' If they died on the way that would be their misfortune. But he was dissuaded from this plan, and instead of it he gave some assistance to an expedition led by Messrs. Hume and Hovell.

The party started from Hime's residence at Lake George in October 1824, crossed the rivers Murrumbidgee, Hume (Murray), Mitta-Mitta, Ovens, and Goulburn and reached the western arm of Port Philliip near the site of Geelong. They made a mistake as to their whereabouts, and upon their return a report was published from information supplied by them wherein it was stated that they had reached Westernport. the mistake was of some importance when in 1826 governor Darling sent out the expedition to occupy Westernport in suspicion that the French under Dumont D'Urville intended to do so. Messrs. Hume and Hovell had traversed excellent country, and, had their report indicated that it lay to the west of Port Phillip, the expedition of 1826 would undoubtedly have been directed to settle there instead of at Westernport, where, after investigation, the conditions were not deemed to be suitable for permanent occupation. Quite a different verdict would have been returned had the expedition directed more of its attention to Port Phillip. It is very curious to observe how little was known in 1825 of the work of the earlier explorers. When Brisbane received the report of Messrs. Hume and Hovell he wrote to London: 'It is my intention, as soon as I have the means, to send a colonial vessel to Westernport to have it explored, as it seems to have escaped Flinders and others.' The governor was wholly unaware that the port was discovered by Bass in 17th, and that it had since been thoroughly explored and mapped by Murray, Grant, Barrallier, and Robbins, in the first decade of the century.

Pennington Gardens, Adelaide, Australia

Allan Cunningham, not less keen as an explorer than as a botanist, fought his way across the Liverpool Range in 1827, penetrated the Darling Downs, and discovered the Gwydir, the Dumaresq, and the Condamine rivers. where did they flow? Between the Condamine in the north and the Goulburn in the south was a distance as great as from the Orkneys to Lands End. Nobody suspected that all the intervening rivers and some more to the west not yet discovered, belonged to the same riparian scheme. that great discovery had yet to be made. The problem of the rivers was taken in hand by one of the most heroic and daring of Australian explorers when Captain Charles Sturt applied himself to it in 1828. Sturt had come to the country with his regiment, the 39th (Dorsets) in the previous year, and at once became fascinated by the question of what became of the large streams which Oxley had navigated, and which Hume and Hovell had crossed. It was speculated that they poured their waters into a great inland sea. If that were true, where was that sea? Sturt wrote that he undertook his series of toilsome explorations from 'a wish to contribute to the public good'; 'I should exceedingly regret,' he said, 'if it were thought I had volunteered hazardous and important undertakings for the love of adventure alone.' The spirit of his work was entirely in accord with that profession.

For three years previously to 1828 Australia had been severely afflicted by drought. Crops failed and stock died for lack of grass and water in districts where there was abundance in normal seasons. If there were well-watered areas in the interior, beyond the zone which had hitherto been examined, it was urged that they should be found. Sturt's expedition was therefore equipped by governor Darling with the view of following up the channel of the Macquarie. It was pursued in a boat as long as there was a sufficient depth of water, and then the explorers started off on horseback, travelling a full month over barren, sun-baked, drought-smitten plains, till suddenly they found themselves on the precipitous banks of a river which gleamed forty feet below them. They had found the Darling. The water in it, to their deep disappointment, was brackish, but there were fortunately occasional pools of drinkable water with which they could refresh themselves and their cattle. The parched beds of the Bogan and the Castlereagh were examined before the party were compelled to beat a retreat back to the Macquarie.

The discovery of the Darling was of capital importance. Though Sturt found it in a drought season, when the water was low and salt, and for considerable stretches the bed was quite dry, yet it was evident that those steep banks, down which the cattle could not safely be taken, sometime held a great, deep, raging river. Here was a new problem. Whence did this river come? Whither did it go? In 1829 the intrepid Sturt attacked the river problem at a fresh point. Hume and Hovell had crossed the Murumidgee on their overland journey to Port Phillip. The direction of this river's flow and that of the Darling seemed to indicate that the two formed a junction somewhere. The speculation was well founded, and the new journey was to prove itself one of high historical interest. Sturt left Sydney on November 3, and struck the banks of the Murrumbidgee near Yass on November 23. There it was a rapid, foaming stream, fresh from the snowy mountains to the east. Its banks were followed until the water shallowed into reed-beds. Then Sturt, with undaunted resource and energy, decided to leave his cattle and stores, put together a whaleboat the planks and parts of which he had brought with him, and set out to explore the further source of the river in it. He selected seven of his party to accompany him, three of them soldiers of his regiment, three convicts, all men upon whose devotion, and courage he could implicitly rely. At seven o'clock in the morning on January 7, 1830, commenced the very remarkable voyage which was to prove the junction of the Murrumbidgee and the Darling with the Murray, and was to trace the whole course of that great waterway to the sea.

After a dangerous and exciting journey of a week, piloting the boat through formidable barriers of snags, suddenly and unexpectedly the river current took a southern course. At two in the afternoon of January 14, the boat shut out of the Murrumbidgee into a broad and noble river with such force that the explorers were 'carried nearly to the bank opposite its mouth,' while they 'gazed in silent wonder' upon the large channel they had entered. Nine days later a new and beautiful river was found pouring itself into the main stream, and Sturt felt sure that this was the Darling, which he had discovered, a salt and shrunken ribbon of water, 300 miles to the north-east, on his previous journey. The identity was not completely established till some years later, but Sturt's reasoning in 1830 was really sufficient to make the point clear. The boat was carried down by the current until the Murray emptied itself into the great lake at the mouth, and the explorers saw to the westward of them the blue waters of Encounter Bay. Sturt gave to the great river the name of Sir George Murray, who happened to be Secretary of State for War and the Colonies for a few months in 1828-30. He was a man whom the Duke of Wellington took into his Cabinet because he liked him as a soldier, but who is described by an English historian as one who 'had given no signs of any capacity in debate and had display7ed no qualifications for administering a civil office.' Murray had even ceased to be a minister before the news reached England that his name had been given to the trunk of the great river-system of Australia.

The total cost to the Government of equipping the expedition from which so much resulted was 265 pounds 19s. 4.3/4d.

Alexander Hume, the leader of the expedition of 1824, claimed that the Murray was simply the lower part of the river which he had discovered and named after himself; and, really, he was quite right. True, he had not explored it for more than a few miles, nor could he have done so consistently with carrying out the plan upon which he was engaged; whereas Sturt had followed it for 1,759 miles from its junction with the Murrumbidgee to the sea. But that fact does not detract from the soundness of Hume's claim; and though the river is likely to carry the name of Murray perpetually, there does not seem to be any better reason for thus celebrating an obscure politician (who, when questioned late in 1830), did not know who Sturt was or where the river was) than that it is too well established to be altered. Sturt's two great journeys of 1828-30 were the most important pieces of inland exploration in Australian history. Others may have had more exciting adventures and endured greater hardships. Sturt himself in the expedition from Adelaide in 1844 - to be discussed thereafter - did a more desperately brave thing. But the discovery of the Darling and the exploration of the Murray to the mouth; the laying down upon the map of the main arteries of the enormous spread of river-veins which take the water from 414,253 square miles of territory - double the area of France; the opening of a new, rich, well-watered province for British colonization - this was the consummate achievement of Sturt's career as an explorer. Withal, he was a kind and considerate gentleman, 'brave as a paladin, gentle as a girl,' a leader of men who was followed by his chosen band in any risk because he was trusted and beloved. Exposure, privations, anxiety, and severe labour on these expeditions brought on bad health and a period of blindness; and he never received adequate recognition and honour for what he had done.

The Surveyor-General of New South Walws, Major Thomas Mitchell (he had been appointed to that office in 1828), did not conceal his jealousy and annoyance that Sturt was chosen to command the expedition to solve the river problem. He himself was keen to attain fame as an explorer, and thought that the task should have been entrusted to him. But there was plenty of valuable work still to be done in this field, and Mitchell had abundant opportunities of proving his own worth. His first expeditions were to the upper Darling country in 1831 and again in 1835, when he found the great river not low as Sturt had seen it, but flowing full and sweet-watered through richly grassed country. He now discovered that Allan Cunningham's Gwydir and Dumaresq were tributaries of the Darling. The fragments of streams found by one explorer after another, and marked in thin, disconnected streaks upon their maps, were becoming linked up.

In the following year, 1836, Mitchell planned his most famous expedition. He was entrusted to find out whether the Darling was the same river as Sturt had found flowing into the Murray. He was somewhat doubtful of Sturt's reasoning; his jealousy apparently made him hope that Sturt was wrong. But even before he reached the point of junction he realized that the Darling was indeed a tributary of the Murray. The problem was solved, and if Mitchell had returned to Sydney when he realised that his allotted task was done the expedition of 1836 would have fallen short of being very important. But after working up the Murray for about a fortnight, he crossed over to the south side of it, camped at Swan Hill, kept moving southerly, and ascended Mount Hope and Pyramid Hill. There he had a Pisgah-sight which fascinated him. All around him the explorer saw a magnificent stretch of fresh country, quite different from that to which he had been accustomed in New South Wales. He threw up his hands in rapture. Moses had never entered the Promised Land, but he, Thomas Mitchell, beheld a perfect Paradise rolling in green and golden glory before his eyes, and was to be the first to traverse it. 'As I stood,' he wrote, 'the first intruder on the sublime solitude of these verdant plains, as yet untouched by flocks and herds, I felt conscious of being the harbinger of mighty changed there; for our steps would soon he followed by the men and the animals for which it seemed to have been prepared.' Into 'this Eden' he believed that he was the first to break.

But in that he was mistaken. When he had led his party by easy and pleasant stages through the western district of Victoria, had discovered the Glenelg River, and had started on his homeward route, he suddenly obtained a glimpse of Portland Harbour, and there, to his great surprise, he beheld a brig lying at anchor, and what he at first took for grey rocks proved, on examination through his telescope, to be a cluster of comfortable huts on the shore. For, in December 1834 - that is, a year and nine months before Mitchell appeared upon the scene - the Henty brothers had taken up their unauthoirized abode at Portland, with flocks, herds, poultry, and a serviceable whaling ship. Fruit-trees and vines were growing, garden flowers and vegetables were flourishing, and fields were under cultivation in Australia Felix before the explorer who called the country by that name set out from Sydney. The brig in the bay was the Hentys' vessel, the Elizabeth; and while Mitchell was enjoying the hospitality of those pioneers a hunchback whale came into the bay and afforded an opportunity to him of witnessing an exciting chase. 'It was not the least interesting scene in these my Australian travels,' wrote Mitchell, 'thus to witness, from a verandah, on a beautiful afternoon at Portland Bay, the humours of the whale fishery and all those wondrous perils of harpooners and whaleboats of which I had delighted to read as scenes of the stormy north.'

And these were not the only precursors of settlement in Victoria at this very time. In the year before Mitchell started - in June 1835 - John Batman had steered a boat up the river Yarra and exclaimed, 'This will be the place for a village' when he contemplated the site of Melbourne. The village had actually been founded, and men were living in it. unknown to and unauthorised by the authorities in Sydney, at the very time when, to the westward of them, Mitchell, travel-worn but still elated, was leading his expedition back across the verdant valleys of his Eden.

DEMOCRACY AT WORK

(a) Government

...

The Australian colonies, having been endowed with complete self-governing powers in the manner previously described, were free to work out their own political destinies under the protection of the British flag, but with a minimum of interference from the British Government. They were at liberty to dispose of their lands as they chose, to raise revenue as they chose - they could tax imports from each other and from the mother-country, since no restrictions were placed upon their fiscal freedom - to make whatever laws they chose relative to their own form of government, the franchise, the relations of capital and labour, and everything else within the domain of social and political organization. they were enfranchised democracies, with scope for exercising democratic government under such favourable conditions as had rarely occurred before in the history of the world. they were relieved from trouble concerning foreign aggression, because they were sheltered by the greatest naval power in the world. That security is the dominating fact in the history of Australia. Her people, while they were developing their resources and shaping their institutions, never had any serious anxiety about the safety of their country.

There were occasional 'scares,' when wars and rumours of wars occupied the public mind, but there never was any serious danger. during the Crimean War, in 1854, the people of both Sydney and Melbourne were alarmed lest Russian cruisers should raid their ports. Sir William Denison, who was Governor of New South Wales at the time, had been an officer of the Royal Engineers, and took a lively interest in the fortification of Port Jackson. Fort Denison, which in later years came to be variously regarded as a picturesque survival or as an impediment to navigation, according to the disposition of the beholder, was constructed. Guns were also placed so as to command the entrance to the port and its channels. But the excitement was soon allayed, and there was no real cause for it, though it can be understood in view of the paucity of information as to what was happening in Europe; for there was no submarine cable at that time.

A curious document exists which, if genuine, shows that the Emperor Napoleon III at one time gave thought to the possibility of making an attack on Australia. While Lord John Russell was Foreign Secretary in Great Britain this paper came into his possession. Having read it, he put it in an envelope, sealed it up, and enclosed it with the words: 'Private. Very important. Questions drawn up by Empr. Napoleon with view of seizing our Australian colonies and reviving privateering. 1853. The paper itself purports to reveal a series of questions 'upon the English colonies in Australia.' The questions related to the distribution of the population, whether the rule of the mother country was popular, how many soldiers were in the country, what places were fortified, what artillery there was, whether 10,000 men would suffice to hold Victoria against any force which the English might bring to retain the colony, which would be the best points for a landing, what would be the principal obstacles to the success of such an expedition, whether Algerian troops would be well adapted for such an enterprise, and whether 'Geelong, Melbourne and Mount Alexander could be well fortified in a short space of time.' The spelling of Port Phillip as 'Port Philippe' suggests that the person who supplied Lord John Russell with the information was a Frenchman; but the document is not in French, though it professed to be copied from an original written by Napoleon III. The copyist said, 'want of time, or rather the danger of discovery, did not allow of a complete copy being taken.'

Russell's informant was therefore, clearly, a spy, and was probably paid for the information he supplied. Whether in this instance he was supplying correct information id doubtful. Two of the questions do not indicate an intelligent knowledge of Australian geography. (1) The sensational gold discoveries at Mount Alexander in 1851-2 gave prominence to that place in the newspapers, but it is not easy to believe that Napoleon III considered that inland hill near Castlemaine, a suitable position for fortification. (2) Another question referred to 'the colonies of Victoria and Sydney.' Although Lord John Russell thought the document 'important' in 1853, we should not now consider it as more than interesting. There is certainly nothing to corroborate the assertion of the spy that Napoleon III thought of attacking Australia. During the last period of the American Civil War, in January, 1865, the Confederate steamer Shenandoah entered Port Phillip, and her commander, Lieutenant Waddell, asked permission of the Governor of Victoria, Sir Charles Darling, to effect certain repairs to her machinery, and to take on board coal and supplies. The ship had put to se from a port in Great Britain under the name of The Sea King, but her name had been changed to Shenandoah during her cruise, she had mounted guns as a ship of war, and had been employed in sinking vessels belonging to the Federal (or Northern) States of America. All British possessions were warned, when the civil war broke out in 1861, that it was necessary to observe strict neutrality, and the Foreign Enlistment Act forbade British subjects to take any part in the contest. The Shenandoah was entitled, under the international rules of war, to the consideration for which Lieutenant Waddell had ask3ed, and no offence was committed against the Government of the United States (the 'Federal' Government) in permitting her to make repairs and take in supplies.

But while the ship was in dock, the American Consul in Melbourne warned the Governor that the crew of the Shenandoah was being strengthened by the enlistment of British subjects, and that at least one man had already gone on board. The Governor sent a police officer with a warrant to arrest the man. but Lieutenant Waddell refused to allow his ship to be searched for the purpose of executing the warrant. He said that the dock of a man-of-war was 'inviolable,' and that sooner than allow the police officer to make a search be 'would fight his ship.' At the same time he gave to the Governor 'his word of honour as an officer and a gentleman' that he had no British subject on board, nor had he engaged anyone, nor would he do so while he was in the port. There is no doubt that Lieutenant Waddell was not truthful in these undertakings and statements.

The Victorian Government placed a police guard to watch the ship and prevent British subjects from going on board. But despite these precautions the Shenandoah did augment her crew while she was within the port of Melbourne; and after leaving the port she committed further depredations against shipping belonging to subjects of the United States, which were computed by the government of that country to amount to 6,300,000 dollars. At the conclusion of the war, the United States Government made claims against the British Government for compensation on account of damage done by Confederate ships which had been allowed to sail from British orts. The greatest amount of damage was committed by the Alabama, and the whole case is consequently known by that ship's name. The claims were referred to a court of arbitration which sat at Geneva in 1872. The total amount awarded to the United States was 15,500,000 dollars (3,250,000 pounds). The arbitrators were not unanimous as to whether any sum ought to be awarded on account of the Shenandoah. Two were of opinion that no fault was committed at Melbourne; but three held that the Victorian Government had been negligent. By a majority of one, therefore, the court decided that Great Britain was liable for 'all the acts committed by that vessel after her departure from Melbourne on February 18, 1865.' As the court decided to award what it termed a 'sum in gross,' without specifying how much was allowed in particular instances, the official record does not state what sum was awarded on account of the Shenandoah; but though the amount cannot be precisely ascertained, there is evidence to show that it was about one-fourth of the total sum. Sir Alexander Cockburn, afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England, who was a member of the court of arbitration, held that the award in respect to the Shenandoah was unjust; and the Secretary of State wrote to Governor Sir Charles Darling, informing him that in the opinion of the British Government the actions of the Victorian Government in the matter had been correct.

The constitutions conferred upon the colonies were not unalterable instruments. They contained within themselves power to 'repeal, alter, or vary' any provision. Thus, if New South Wales had desired to substitute on elective for a nominated Legislative Council, she could have done it by the simple passing of an Act for the purpose, provided that the Act was passed by an absolute majority of the members of each House. That the colonies would wish to alter their constitutions in some respects was soon evident. As has already been pointed out, a very large number of those who immigrated to the country in the gold-digging era were English Chartists or men strongly imbued with Chartist or extr3eme radical political ideas. Men like Henry Parkes, David Syme, Graham Berry, James Service, and many others who influenced thought or directed policy in Australia, had either been actively connected with English Chartists or were imbued with Chartist principles. They quickly saw opportunities for realising their opinions in Australia years before there was a possibility of securing substantial reforms along such lines in Great Britain.

The attainment of voting by ballot presents a good illustration of this statement. The principle was one of the six 'points' of the English Chartists, and at the time when responsible government was conferred upon the Australian colonies it had not been adopted anywhere within the British Empire. It was brought forward in the Legislative Council in December 1855. On a resolution in favour of voting by ballot in the Electoral Bill then under consideration being carried against the wish of the Government, the first Victorian Premier, Haines, resigned office. But the motion, which was submitted by William Nicholson, was adhered to by the House. Clauses embodying the ballot principle were prepared by Henry Samuel Chapman, then a member of the Victorian Legislative Council, and afterwards a judge in New Zealand. Nicholson, though his motion secured the adoption of the ballot principle, was unable to work out a practical method of giving effect to it. Chapman's legal skill came to his assistance, and he was therefore the real author of the Victorian ballot system, which was passed into law in March 1856. In April 1856, South Australia also adopted a ballot system. The other Australian colonies soon followed these examples.

Yet there were many at the time who had grave misgivings about abandoning the old, familiar method of open voting at the hustings, and, curiously enough, amongst them was Hugh Childers, then the Victorian Commissioner of Customs, but afterwards a member of several Liberal Governments in Great Britain. In England, where bills to institute voting by ballot were rejected twenty-eight times by the House of Lords, and where the supporters of the principle did not succeed till 1872, the system proposed was generally called during the discussions 'the Victorian ballot'; and a learned critic of American institutions records that in that country 'secret, or as they are called "Australian," official ballot laws are now in force in all the States except Georgia and South Carolina' (Bryce, American Commonwealth), vol. ii, 148).

The Australian reformers brought with them from Great Britain a stock of political ideas which those who advocated them had failed to embody in legislative shape there, but which it was much easier to enact in Australia. Phrases of English origin became the common stock of Australian politics. The phrase 'one man one vote,' which expressed the aspiration to abolish dual or multiple voting powers for the propertied classes, was coined by Major Cartwright, the English radical, in the great days of Pitt and Fox. It is the law in all the Australian States, and the Commonwealth constitution enacts that 'in the choosing of members each elector shall vote only once.' The principle of payment of members of Parliament, adop0ted in all the Australian colonies, was a Chartist demand. The abolition of the property qualification for members of the popular house of legislature, which all the Australian colonies likewise adopted, was taken from the Chartist programme. So was manhood suffrage. The 'People's Charter' of the early Victorian radicals did not, it is true, embody women's suffrage; and the main arguments for that principle were borrowed by the Australian supporters from John Stuart Mill and his school. South Australia was the first of the six colonies to confer the franchise on women (1894). Western Australia (1899) was the next. New South Wales (1902) was the third. Tasmania enfranchised women in 1903, Queensland in 1905, Victoria in 1908, and the other colonies placed adults of both sexes on an electoral equality by later constitutional amendments.

The two colonies (New South Wales and Queensland), whose Legislative Councils were, in the commencement of responsible government, erected as nominee chambers, adhered to that system until 1922. In that year the Legislative Council of Queensland was abolished. In the four other instances the Councils were elected by constituents possessing property qualifications. There was one sharp crisis with the New South Wales Legislative Council in the early years of its history. The constitution of 1855 - Wentworth's Act - provided that the first Council of twenty-one members should be appointed by the governor for five years, but that at the expiration of that term 'all future members shall hold their seats for the term of their natural lives.' It happened that during those first five years the Government headed by Charles Cooper had introduced a Land Bill designed to make it easier for poor men to acquire farms. The bill, whose author was John Robertson, embodied the contentions principle of 'free selection before survey,' which meant that a selector desiring to obtain a piece of land could enter upon any crown land - even if it were alr3eady leased to a squatter - pick out a block, and settle upon it. But the squatters who occupied large areas of land leased from the Crown objected to this proposal, because it would enable selectors to enter upon their sheep-runs, pick out the best pieces, such as well-watered and fertile parts, and leave them with the inf3erior land. It would also, they urged, enable men who had no real intention to settle to enter upon a leased run and select, in the hope that the squatter would pay them something to get rid of them. As the Legislative Council consisted largely of landowners and others who were friendly with the squatter class, it was quite expected that that House would amend the Cowper Government's Bill.

The bill passed the Legislative Assembly in 1861. the five years' term of the first Legislative Council was drawing to a close; and, had Cowper delayed the measure for a few weeks, he would have been able to nominate such a Council as would certainly pass it. But he was impatient to get his Land Bill upon the statute-book, and when the council amended it so as to prevent a selector from picking out land upon a leased run, he adopted the startling course of advising he Governor (Sir John Young) to appoint twenty-one fresh members. but those nominees never took their seats in the first Legislative Council of New South Wales; for when they presented themselves to be sworn in, on the last day of sitting of the last week of the five years period, the President, Sir William Burton, at once resigned office and walked out, followed by the majority of the members. Governor Young was afterwards censured by the Secretary of State for the Colonies for accepting advice to create 'upon a sudden and for a single night' sufficient Legislative Councillors to convert a government minority into a majority. The new council - entirely nominated, of course, by the Cowper Government - carried its land legislation without demur.

After this incident the Cowper Government proposed to make the Council an elective body. Wentworth, who had watched the proceedings just narrated with indignation, now favoured the elective principle, since, he declared in wrathful scorn, the nomination system had enabled a Government 'to sweep the streets of Sydney in order to attempt to swamp the House by the introduction of twenty-one members.' But a committee to which the bill for establishing an elective council was referred reported strongly against establishing an upper house based on manhood suffrage; and, as Cowper had intended to make a wide franchise the complement of his scheme, and now saw no hope of doing so, he did not persist with it. In 1872 Henry Parkes made an attempt to introduce an elective element into the Council, but failed to convince Parliament that a change was desirable.

Not long after the commencement of responsible government the elective Legislative Council of Victoria became engaged in a bitter struggle with the Legislative Assembly, and public opinion in New south Wales, watching the exciting events which were occurring over the border, saw that the nominee system did after all afford a ready means of bringing the Council into harmony with the policy of the Ministry of the day, by the nomination of new members; whereas, under the system of election on a property qualification, there was a much graver risk of the two Houses getting into conflict and deadlock. The Victorian quarrel, the first of a succession of such disputes between two legislative bodies, was of great interest in the history of parliamentary government in the British Empire; and the importance of it is increased by the fact that it was connected with the initiation of what ultimately became the economic policy of Australia as a whole. In 1864 the Ministry of James McCullock gave its support to the principle of imposing customs duties upon imports, with a view of encouraging the manufacture of those goods in Victoria; that is, to the principle of protection. The conversion of McCulloch and his colleagues to this policy had been somewhat sudden; for in a public speech at the previous general election he had plainly declared, 'I am opposed to protection; what the colony wants is to buy in the cheapest market and to sell in the dearest.' But a strong body of public opinion had by this time been formed in favour of the protective system, largely under the influence of a man who played a silent but powerful part in Victorian politics for about half a century.

This man was David Syme, a tall, granitic Scotsman, reared on oatmeal and philosophy; a student, but also a keen man of affairs; a thinker deeply interested in the serious literature and problems of the modern world, but one who, whether engaged in cattle-breeding, or scientific speculation, or politics, brought to bear upon the a question in hand the full force of a strong will and a hard, critical, somewhat sceptical intellect. He came to Australia in 1853 and tried his luck on the gold diggings. There he made some money, though he had not much taste for the work. but in 1860 he found the real vocation of his life, as well as his path to fortune, and - what he valued still more - power. His brother, Ebenezer Syme, had also come to Australia, and was at this time writing articles for a newspaper called the Age, which had been started in October 1854. This journal had vehemently championed the cause of the Ballarat miners, but its original proprietors had no liking for the opinions expounded by the little group of men who wrote its leading articles. Ebenezer Syme and his colleagues were, indeed, slashing about in fine style; so that the proprietors, who had simply started the paper to make money and were disappointed in that regard, sold it in December to a co-operative group of printers, who had very little capital, but plenty of energy. Then David Syme came along with the money he had made from mining. His brother advised him to buy the Age, which was on the brink of extinction. David Syme had no belief in the speculation. He doubted whether there was scope for another newspaper in Melbourne. But he did believe in his brother, who had been assistant editor of the Westminster Review in London, and was a man of keen insight. So in 1856 when the Age, with the plant and type, was sold at auction, it was bought for 2,000 pounds by James McEwan, a Melbourne ironmonger, in behalf of the Syme brothers. The newspaper did not make sufficient profit to maintain both of them, and David Syme engaged in contracting till his accomplished brother died in 1860, when, rather unwillingly, he took over the management himself.

On many subjects Syme had thought himself into opinions which were at variance with those commonly entertained. Nearly everybody in Australia who took a keen interest in politics at that time was a free-trader. Cobden and Bright and the Anti-Corn-Law League had triumphed in Great Britain in 1845, when they won Sir Robert Peel to their side; and English colonists, especially those who favoured liberal principles, accepted free trade as a fixed part of the British system. Syme himself said in a letter that, when he started to advocate protection for native industries in the Age, 'there was not, so far as I knew, a man in the whole country but was a free-trader.' But he came to the conclusion that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to establish successful manufacturing industries in Victoria as long as manufactures were exposed to the unrestricted competition of British and foreign firms, commanding large capital and great output. 'A bar is put upon the attempt at the very outset,' he said in the first leading article he wrote on the subject; and unless local efforts were protected by the imposition of duties on imported manufactures, the people of this new country would 'be as utter strangers to all scientific skill and practical dexterity in the arts and manufactures of highly civilised nations as are the Bedouins of Barbary or the Tartars of Central Asia.'

Whether this was a true theory of trade or otherwise is not a subject with which we are now concerned. We have to do with historical causes and consequences; and the effect of Syme's advocacy of protection, which he maintained with unflagging vigour, was very remarkable. During a period of commercial depression he persisted in his policy, and very soon there was a strong party in Melbourne which carried the agitation to the platform and forced it forward as a political issue. Politicians who had scouted protection began to realize that Syme's journal was carrying weight with the elections. A parliamentary champion was found in Graham Berry, a London Chartist with a fervid oratorical temperament. After a general election in 1865 there was a majority of members of the Legislative Assembly in favour of imposing a protective tariff, and McCulloch, who, like many others, had swung round, pledged his Government to introduce one.

When McCulloch carried out his promise by submitting a tariff to Parliament in 1865, his Government was already engaged in a quarrel with the Legislative Council, which he had proposed to reform by reducing the property qualification and shortening the period for which the members were elected from ten years to five. The Council had promptly rejected this measure, and McCulloch judged from the tone of the debate and his knowledge of the political atmosphere that his tariff would be treated in a similar manner. He therefore determined to throw down a challenge to the combative Council by sending the tariff to it not in a separate bill, which would have been the ordinary procedure, but 'tacked' to the Appropriation Bill for voting money for the ordinary annual services of the country. The expedient of 'tacking' a measure known to be repugnant to an upper house, to an annual appropriation bill, was not a new one. It had been done in England in the reign of William III, but had always been regarded by the House of Lords as an unconstitutional procedure. But McCulloch clearly meant not merely to force his protective tariff through Parliament, but also to break the Legislative Council, which he had failed to reform. By 'tacking' the tariff to the Appropriation bill he threw upon the Council the responsibility of accepting or rejecting the whole measure, since under the Victorian constitution a bill appropriating revenue was one which the council was not empowered to amend. It could accept or reject, but could not alter a line.

Then commenced a protracted conflict of exceptional acuteness. The Council 'laid aside' the bill. Consequently the Government did not obtain authority to spend the money which was required to carry on public works, pay the civil service, meet bills, and so forth. Meanwhile the Government continued to collect revenues from importers, who were compelled to pay duty on their goods. This they did in accordance with the British practice, which made duties of customs collectable from the time of the proposal of new rates to the House of Commons, and before they had been sanctioned by Parliament. some of the merchants sued the Government to recover money which they held to have been illegally collected, and the Supreme Court decided in their favour. But the government defied the Court and went on collecting the revenue, which it was legally neither empowered to take nor authorized to spend. McCulloch's ingenuity hit upon the device of borrowing 40,000 pounds from the London Bank of Australia, of which he was a director, and then inducing the Bank to sue the Government for the recovery of the money borrowed. The Government did not defend the suit, the Bank got judgement in its favour, and the Governor authorized the handing over of the 40,000 pounds. It was clever, and it enabled the Government to tide over present difficulties under shelter of law. By several repetitions of the processes of borrowing and of paying back under an order of the Court, the claims of the public creditor were me6t. But the difficulty between th3e two branches of the Legislature remained unsettled.

In November the controversy entered upon a new phase, when the government consented to send a separate tariff bill to the Council, thus removing he 'talk' to the Appropriation bill which had given such offences. but the bill now contained a retrospective clause, designed to render of no avail judgements which had been obtained from the Supreme Court by the merchants who had sued the Government. The Council objected to this and several other provisions of the bill, and refused to pass it. The position of deadlock between the two Houses was therefore unrelieved. As there was no constitutional means of settling such differences, the Government determined to appeal to the country. The Governor, Sir Charles Darling, on the advice of his ministers, granted a dissolution of the Legislative Assembly. The Legislative Council, though an elective body, was not, under the constitution, affected by a dissolution. Its members held their seats during the ten years for which they were elected, no matter what happened to the other branch of the Legislature.

The general election evoked to the shrillest pitch the storm of controversy which had raged in the country during the discussion of these events. The opulent resources of the English language were fully exploited for terms of abuse which partisans hurled at each other. The issue was mainly that protection, and the action of the Council in rejecting the tariff. The Council itself, though thoroughly unpopular, certainly had constitutional justification for refusing to pass a money bill with extraneous provisions 'tacked' to it. But the set of public opinion against what was generally regarded as a compact body of landowners fighting for their own interests was so determined that the constituencies were little inclined to weigh technical justifications. The McCulloch Government was swept back to power on a wave of popular enthusiasm, and it faced the new Parliament in 1866 with a solid and resolute protectionist majority behind it. Even now, however, the Council would not yield. Once more it rejected the Tariff Bill, which, it must be confessed, received little consideration on its merits as a measure of protection, because it was complicated with provisions which McCulloch's pugnacious Attorney-General, Higinbotham, insisted on putting into it, and which, the Council held, ought not to form part of a bill imposing customs duties. The simple issue of tariff or no tariff was not laid before the Council. It was clogged with other principles.

McCulloch now resigned office, but the Assembly passed a resolution informing the Governor that it would no6t support any Government which did not persist with the bills alr3eady submitted to the Council. It was therefore plainly useless for the Governor to choose a Ministry from the opposition. Nor form of government which the wit of man can devise will work well unless those who live under it are prepared to oil its wheels with good-will. The British constitution, upon which the Victorian instrument was modelled, would break down unless in times of crisis a spirit of concession prevailed. But the two Victorian houses in 1865-6 had come to a condition of deadlock through a conflict of obstinate wills, and as the latter year wore on relations were strained almost to breaking point. There was much inflammatory rhetoric; revolution rumbled behind the menacing clouds of political conflict; something had to give way. McCulloch resumed office, and reintroduced the Tariff Bill. It was passed for the fourth time and sent to the council. but cool advice had been tendered to the members of that body, and they now proposed a conference between selected members of the two House. As the result of talks between fourteen representatives, the Tariff was at length accepted by the Council with the elimination of the retrospective clause and of certain expressions in the preamble declaratory of the rights of the Assembly, to which strong opposition had been made.

The protective policy, which was due mainly to Syme's advocacy, was thus initiated in Victoria amidst furious storms. Incidentally the struggle made the fortune of the Age, and gave to Syme the pre-eminence in Victorian politics which he continued to exercise as long as that generation survived. He was a more vigorous thinker and a stronger personality than were most of the politicians, and he dictated policies to them from his newspaper office, confident that the electorate would follow his head. His success was the result of hard fighting and a consummate understanding of how to manipulate political forces. but though the tariff issue was now settled, days of peace were by no means at hand. Rancours bubbled in the parliamentary cauldron, and fresh flames burst forth shortly.

The position of Governor Darling throughout the recent disputes had been one of exceptional difficulty. the disruption of the normal mode of financing the affairs of government, the resort to the expediency of borrowing money from a bank and getting the bank to sue the Government for the amount borrowed because Parliament had not passed the necessary Appropriation bill, the uncompromising cleavage between the two Houses, the whole welter of bitter controversy, had thrown upon Darling responsibilities in discharging which he was bound to displease the one party or the other. He had acted upon the advice of his ministers, and that advice had been given in the heat of party conflict and for the purpose of winning party victory. but he had shown marked sympathy with his ministers, and had in an official despatch attacked certain petitioners against the action of the McCulloch ministry as guilty of 'conduct highly discreditable,' as 'ministering to their own personal and pecuniary profit' in what they had done, and as unworthy of ever holding responsible office. A review of Darling's actions during the crisis included the Secretary of State to write a despatch censuring he recalling him.

But, however much the Legislative Council and the supporters might hate the governor, he was a popular hero. The stalwarts of the Assembly declared that he had been victimized by the Colonial Office because he had not thwarted the popular cause. The rich squatters, they said, had compassed his ruin because he would not be their creature. Torchlight processions and public demonstrations were held in his honour, and he might have papered government House with the illuminated addresses which poured in. the Assembly voted an address wherein it stated that Darling had saved Victoria from anarchy by adhering to the principles of popular government. As he could no longer expect employment in the Colonial Office the Assembly voted 20,000 pounds to Lady Darling. Again the country boiled with excitement. The 20,000 pounds item was included in the supplementary estimates of expenditure, and the Legislative Council promptly rejected the bill, contending that such a grant ought to have been the subject of a separate measure. Though the new Governor, Manners-Sutton, sent a message to the Council informing it that Darling had resigned from the colonial service in the belief that the grant would be made, and that failure to make it would be in the nature of repudiation, the Council would not yield. McCulloch adopted in regard to the Darling grant the method that he had pursued on the tariff. He resigned, but his solid majority would not grant supplies to the Ministry which Manners-Sutton induced to succeed him. then he consented to resume office on condition that he secured a dissolution which would enable him to take the verdict of the country. Once more he and his party were triumphantly returned. But this time the Imperial Government, thinking that Victoria had had enough of bitter strife, ended it by granting to Darling a pension of 1,000 pounds a year for life, whereupon he intimated that Lady Darling would not accept the 20,000 pounds which the Assembly was determined to vote.

There was another deadlock between the Victorian Houses in 1877 on the question of the payment of members of Parliament. The principle had been approved by the country, and the Legislative Council had twice (1870 and 1874) passed Acts embodying it. But these had been temporary measures, lapsing after a prescribed time. The Government headed by Graham Barry now (1877) resolved to make payment of members the permanent rule. A bill for the purpose was passed by the Assembly, but was rejected by the Council. Berry thereupon resolved to fight the Council; and he threw down a challenge to it by including the required sum in the annual Appropriation bill. It was another instance of 'tacking,' and the rejection of the measure was a foregone conclusion. Berry was determined to exert coercive pressure upon the Council which had so often and so defiantly thwarted the Assembly.

As the Council would not pass the Appropriation Bill containing the offending item, and the Assembly would not have the bill without the item, Berry resolved to reduce expenditure and carry on government by an expedient. On January 8, 1878 (known in Victorian history as Black Wednesday), by proclamation he dismissed a considerable number of public servants from their offices. They were principally heads of departments and well-paid officials, and their sudden ejection from office, by depriving them of the means of paying rents, interest on mortgages, tradesmen's bills, and other debts, brought about an immediate collapse in the value of property. It was plainly intimated that other dismissals might follow. The plea was the necessity of reducing expenditure, but the political object undoubtedly was to bring pressure to bear on the Council and make its members sorry for their defiance. Next, Berry induced the Assembly to declare by resolution that grants of money voted by it were to 'become legally available for expenditure,' without the concurrence of the Council. thirdly, he persuaded the Governor (Sir George Bowen), that he could legally sign what were called 'Treasury warrants,' authorizing expenditure which had been voted by the one house of legislature but not ratified by the other.

These were not strictly constitutional acts, but they were effective. In March 1878 intermediaries declared that the Council would now view the payment of members proposal in a move conciliatory spirit. The Appropriation Bill was passed without the 'tack,' and the Council agreed to a Payment of Members Bill to operate till the end of the existing Parliament, with the understanding that a permanent measure for the purpose would afterwards be accepted. In 1880 a bill making payment of members part of the regular governing system of Victoria was passed without dispute, the Council, however, stipulating that it should not apply to its own members.

There have been disputes between the two houses of legislature in other colonies, but none approaching in interest and constitutional importance, or in intense feeling, the celebrated Victorian struggles of 1865-6 and 1877-8. The memory of them caused the framers of the Commonwealth constitution to make especially careful provision for remedying deadlocks which might arise between the two houses of the federal legislature. The Victorian Council itself, moreover, recognized a little later (1851) that its own constitution was dangerously remote from popular influences, and reformed itself by reducing he property qualification of its members and electors and the size of its electoral provinces. After 1881 it became rather less of a squatting oligarchy, and somewhat more representative of human beings than of sheep than it had been in the years of its historical fights with McCulloch and Graham Berry.

DEMOCRACY AT WORK

(b) Land, Labour, and the Popular Welfare

For the upbuilding of Australia, the first need was population to occupy its empty spaces and set its industries throbbing. The Wakefield system had provided for the application of the proceeds of land sales to the stimulation of a steady flow of immigrants from Great Britain, and a New South Wales committee on immigration which sat under the chairmanship of Chief Justice Forbes in 1835 strongly recommended that the land revenue should be 'held sacred' for this purpose. In 1842 governor Gipps announced it as his intention to apply 'the whole of the money derived in any shape from land to the purposes of immigration.' but this policy was never consistently followed in any part of Australia.

In the days when the great squatting properties were being formed the landowners were by no means favourable to the encouragement of a constant stream of immigrant settlers. As long as they could obtain sufficient labour to shear their sheep and tend their herds they were content. 'they did not wish to see the good lands cut up among farmers, but considered that the country would fare better - or at all events that they themselves would derive longer profits - from the allocation of these areas among a wealthy class of sheep and cattle magnates. They were satisfied with convict labour; some advocated the introduction of coolie labour from China. But they were suspicious of the free immigration of a British peasantry and farming class, who would probably - as indeed they did - clamour for the breaking up of the large estates. Various systems of 'bounty,' 'assisted,' and 'nominated' immigration were, however, tried between the period of the thirties and that of the establishment of the Commonwealth, which was empowered under the federal constitution to assume control of immigration. In 1837 and later years George Fife Angas introduced a large immigration of German families to South Australia, where they proved themselves to be very valuable settlers. Dr. Lang also went out as an immigration missionary in behalf of his pet colonies of Victoria and "Queensland, and wrote books extolling their attractions.

As early as 1841 a committee of the Legislative Council of New South Wales considered the advisableness of introducing coolie labour from Asia. The Committee reported strongly against the proposal, chiefly on two grounds. First, the introduction of an alien and servile element was was deemed to be undesirable because it would alter the racial character of the population. It would prevent the maintenance in Australia of 'a social and political state corresponding with that of the country from which it owes its origin.' Secondly, collie labour would compete with immigrants from Great Britain, and so seriously lower wages that ultimately coolie labour only would be imported. this view was supported by the ablest of Australian governors, and by statesmen in Great Britain who gave attention to Australian affairs. Sir Richard Bourke wrote that the introduction of coolie labour would mean 'a sacrifice of permanent advantage to temporary expediency'; and Lord Glenelg, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, emphatically declared that the introduction of Asiatic labour would bring agricultural work to Australia into disrepute, and consequently check the immigration of labourers from Great Britain. The clear expression of these views in the late thirties and early forties of the nineteenth century was an interesting prelude to the policy which Australia was hereafter to lay down as essential to her existence as a nation of European origin.

A disposition to exercise a filtering care in the character of immigration made itself apparent as soon as representative institutions got to work. the South Australian constitution had barred that province against the reception of convicts from the beginning; and the first Legislative council of Victoria passed very stringent Acts against the incursion of expirees and ticket-of-leave men from Tasmania. The influx of Chinese to the gold-fields drew attention to the danger that menaced Australia from the fact that her shores lay within a few days' steaming of the overcrowded areas of Asia. In 1858 there were 33,000 Chinese on the Victorian gold-fields, whilst five years before there had been fewer than 2,000. The antipathy to them existed mainly among the miners and artisans, but there were others also who on broad grounds considered that it was undesirable to permit an admixture of races in this sparsely populated land.

The first Act to limit Chinese immigration was passed in Victoria in 1855. It 8imposed a poll-tax of 10 pounds on each Chinese immigrant, and forbade ships to carry more than one Chinese passenger for every ten tons of the vessel's tonnage. Four years later the law was stiffened by requiring Chinese to pay a residence tax of 4 pounds per annum. this legislation was not disallowed by the Crown, though the Secretary of State wrote that it was considered highly objectionable in principle. Queensland and New South Wales also became uneasy about Chinese immigration. both colonies passed stringent measure. Parkes was confronted with an awkward anti-Chinese feeling in 1888. The British Government at this time was disposed to frown upon the exclusion policy, which they did not regard as being in harmony with British treaties with China. Lord Salisbury, then Foreign Secretary, had received a protest from the Chinese Ambassador. But it was impossible to disregard the repugnance of the people for whose welfare the various Australian Governments were responsible. There were riots in Brisbane, and mob violence on the gold-fields created a dangerous situation. Parkes felt it to be necessary to speak plainly. the Australians, he publicly declared, were not 'school-children who can be called to account by the Prime Minister of England'; and 'neither for Her Majesty's ships of war, nor for Her Majesty's representatives, nor for the Secretary of State, do we intend to turn aside from our purpose, which is to terminate the landing of the Chinese on these shores for ever.'

The legal right of a British colony to exclude aliens whom it does not desire to admit within its borders was determined in the Victorian case of Toy versus Musgrove. In this case a Chinese commonly known as Ah Toy - his full name was Chung Teong Toy - came to Victoria in 1888 in the ship Afghan. He was one of 269 Chinese in the vessel. That number was 254 in excess of the number of Chinese who could be admitted from a vessel of the Afghan's tonnage, under the Victorian law. The collector of Customs at Melbourne, Musgrove, acting under instructions from the Minister of his department, refused to allow these persons to land. Ah Toy thereupon brought an action in the Supreme Court of Victoria, to test the legality of his exclusion. The Supreme Court, by a majority of four judges against two (Chief Justice Higinbotham and Mr. Justice Kerford being the minority) decided in favour of Ah Toy. But the Government of Victoria appealed to the Privy Council, the highest court of appeal in the British empire in cases from the colonies. The Privy Council, in 1891, decided that 'an alien has not a legal right enforceable by action, to enter a British colony.' that judgment set at rest all doubt as to the right of the Australian colonies to pass laws to exclude Chinese, or any other aliens, if they thought it prudent to do so. The common feeling on this burning question induced Parkes to call a conference of representatives of the various Governments to consider a common line of policy, and that inter-colonial conference, held in June 1888, brought all the colonies to a common line of action upon a matter of public policy.

The land legislation of Australia might very well be described by the phrase which Oliver Cromwell used concerning the laws of England - 'an ungodly jumble.' IN all the colonies, in the beginning, it was easy to get land. The aim of government was to induce people to settle. An unmeasured space waited occupation. Naturally, the best land soon became the possession of comparatively few people, who acquired it cheaply and held it in large estates. But, as population increased, these large holdings were found to be inconvenient. Broadly speaking, the aim of Governments, since the era of responsible government, was that of settling a yeomanry. John Robertson's 'free selection before survey' policy in New South Wales, Charles Gavan Duffy's Land Act in Victoria in 1862, the Homesteads Act of Queensland, and many other Land Acts, had this aim in view. In all the States there were fierce conflicts between the squatters, who got there first, and the selectors, who complained that the good land had mostly gone before they were born; that the lands which were fit for cultivation were being used for feeding sheep, whilst the lands which were quite good enough for sheep but doubtfully good enough to cultivate were all that were available for the higher purpose. To the student of Australian history it will appear that such a conflict of interests was bound to arise. It could only have been avoided if the Government, from the commencement, had withheld land from those who wanted to use it for the purposes of which it was at the time most profitably adapted; or if some rigorous prescription of areas had been applied.

In later years various expedients for decreasing the great estates have been attempted; compulsory repurchase and the imposition of taxation on unimproved land value being the favourite methods. Many experiments failed. Duffy's scheme for settling farmers on crown lands on easy terms resulted in much 'dummying' by squatters and others who put up their own nominees to acquire land for them; and Robertson's free select6ion policy resulted in 'peacocking' by squatters who induced sham selectors - really agents of their own - to apply for and obtain the best part of leased runs at creating opportunities for small farmers, in the long run made large estates bigger. Moreover, the diversion of much of the energy of younger generations to manufacturing industries, which sprang up behind the barrier of customs duties, weakened the pressure upon the country areas. The policy of water conservation and irrigation, in some localities, has occasioned a degree of intense culture upon small areas that would have seemed impossible to former generations.

South Australia had much less difficulty with her squatters and her land than had the other colonies. The trouble in New South Wales and Victoria was that squatters had been allowed to occupy leased runs and to spend money in making improvements upon them, without any really clear reservation of the right of the Crown to dispose of the lands to farmers in smaller areas; and the squatters, therefore, resented the intrusion of late comers who wished to pick out the best pieces for settlement. But South Australia laid down in wide terms a clear and simple rule which reserved to the Government the right at any time to resume leased lands 'for any purpose of public defence, safety, improvement, convenience, or utility.' The handling of land questions in south Australia was marked by forethought and practical wisdom; and in one conspicuous particular she devised legislation which has been copied with beneficial results and only throughout Australia but also in many colonies of foreign nations.

that reform was the Land Transfer Act, commonly known as the Torrens Act. Robert Torrens was the collector of customs at Port Adelaide. He was not a lawyer, and he knew little about the intricacies of the legal methods of land transfer which had been copied in Australia from Great Britain. If a man bought a piece of land, he became possessed of a sheet of parchment whereon was engrossed at great length the tale of the previous ownerships of the property. These parchment title-deeds were costly, and the phraseology of them, which only a legal specialist could profess to understand, had been the subject of innumerable judicial decisions. Torrens knew, from his experience as a customs officer, that shipping was bought and sold without all this engrossing of prolix jargon. there was an official register in which the change of ownership of a vessel was entered, and a simple certificate from the registrar was a sufficient token that the person named to it was the legal owner. Torrens asked himself why such a cheap and easy method should not be adapted to the transfer of land.

When South Australia acquired responsible government Torrens entered Parliament as member for Adelaide, and commenced to advocate his improved system. but he was opposed and ridiculed. Lawyers declared that land had been transferred by means of title-deeds from time immemorial, and that no other method would give an owner security of tenure. The Chief Justice said that mere registration would not suffice. When Torrens brought a bill embodying his suggestions before Parliament he was laughed at. How could a layman presume to argue that another method was easy and safe, when experienced lawyers assured him that it would never do? But Torrens insisted that it would do, and the South Australian Parliament, despite the opposition of the legal members, believed him. the Real Property Act was passed in 1858, and Torrens himself, resigning his seat in Parliament, was appointed to draw up the regulations under it, and superintend their working. The result was completely successful. A landowner who registered his property under the Torrens Act received the duplicate of a certificate which the office retained; and this was perfect evidence of his possession. If he wished to sell, the purchaser obtained the certificate from him, and, on the sale being registered, the change of ownership was complete; if he wished to mortgage, the certificate was taken to the Registrar's Office, and the mortgage was marked upon it. there was no delay, the process was cheap, and anybody could, by paying a small fee, find out at the Registrar's Office who owned any piece of land at any time.

The other Australian colonies very rapidly adopted the Torrens system, and it was likewise applied in the French colonies. Indeed, Leroy-Beaulieu, in his great treatise on Colonization among Modern Peoples, states that such a system of land transfer is essential to the success of a colony. He claims (vol. ii. p. 25) that the idea had a Frenchman for its 'inventor' thirty or forty years before it was worked out by Torrens in South Australia. It may be so; but Torrens certainly derived his idea from his experience among shipping, as explained above, not from any book or outside suggestion. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century labour question began to assume an importance which they had not previously had, though there was as yet no sign of the growth of a distant Labour Party in Australian policies. The trade unions, in the beginning, were simply industrial organizations, modelled on the lines of English societies of the same kind; and, as far as concerns their original character. The earliest record of a combination of workmen to raise wages occurred in 1847, when a meeting of ship-owners in Sydney was held to consider the demand made by seamen and labourers usually employed in the outfit of vessels that their wage should be raised from 3s. to 4s. per day. The demand was resisted because it 'did not arise from scarcity of seamen or labourers, nor from inadequacy of wages hitherto paid,' but from 'combination on the part of the men, which they believe they can carry into effect at this important and busy season of the year.'

But there is no clear evidence of the existence of organized trade unions before the beginning of the gold-fields era. There was a Masons' Society in Melbourne in 1850, but whether it was a true trade union is not clear. In 1855, however, there were certainly unions of stone-masons both in Sydney and Melbourne, and they adopted from a kindred society in the same trade in Otago, New Zealand, the idea of agitating for an eight-hours working day. The eight-hours day, like trade unionism itself, and like the political projects of the Chartists, was an English working-class ideal. It was adopted in nearly all trades in which there were trade unions. After 1879 there were several trade union congresses; and the fact that the first gathering of the kind took place several years before the first inter-colonial conference of politicians on any question of public interest is noteworthy. The object of these congresses was primarily to consider matters of concern to trade unions; but there were also manifestations of political tendency. thus the congress of 1884 passed a resolution strongly favouring the payment of members of Parliament in those colonies where the system did not yet prevail, and one reason given for it was that it would enable the working class 'to get proper men to represent them, men who understood and knew how to advocate their wants.'

But the idea of working class representations was for other than that of forming a distinct Labour Party. The unionists of the congresses hoped at most to return a sufficient number of members of Parliament for electorates in which there were working class majorities, to influence legislation on advanced liberal lines. It was not till after 1890 that labour groups began to appear to distinct political factors, and not till after the establishment of the Commonwealth that they were serious competition for power in the political arena. The year 1890 was the pivot of the movement. A great maritime strike occurred in that year. A steamship captain dismissed a fireman who was a member of the Seamen's Union. the union took up the man's cause, and a strike commenced. At about the same time a society of ship's officers, having been unable to secure an increase of pay, and observing that trade union methods were generally more successful than their own had been, took steps to affiliate with the Trades Hall Council of Melbourne. To this the ship-owners strongly objected. They required that the officers' society should renounce the connection before consideration was given to their rates of pay. But the society objected to its freedom to join with others being interfered with, and refused. A strike of officers ensued; and the seamen, firemen, and wharf-labourers decided to support them by striking also; so that the whole shipping trade was paralysed.

The dispute rapidly spread to other trades, for the unionists believed themselves to be face to face with an endeavour on the part of the employers to crush the unions from which they derived protection. a general unrest affected organized labour throughout Australia. The Shearers' Union went on strike at the very time when the fleeces were ready to be cut. The issue was joined between organized labour and combined capital - between workmen who would only negotiate through their unions and objected to work with non-unionists, and employers who maintained their right to employ 'free labour.' The maritime strike lasted three months, and was a cause of intense bitterness. It ended when the workmen had nearly exhausted their funds and saw their unions brought to the verge of bankruptcy. For they were fighting a very wealthy combination of employers, who were determined, as some of their spokesmen said, to 'break Trades Hall domination.' But the failure of 1890 changed the character of Australian unionism, and, ultimately, of Australian politics. The union leaders now began to preach the necessity for political aggression. The fight must be transf3erred to the legislative chambers. The fight must be transferred to the legislative chambers. Parliamentary action must achieve what strikes had failed to win.

The Labour Party from the period became so aggressive political organization with independent aims. As long as the elected representatives were not strong enough to stand alone, they threw their weight into the scale in favour of policies as nearly in conformity with their own ideals as they could induce other parties to propose. Sometimes they managed to count almost as many votes as either of the two other parties, and then they supported the 9one which would make most concessions to them. In only one colony did a Labour Government hoist itself into being before Federation, namely, in Queensland, where in 1899 Anderson Dawson, the labour leader in the Legislative Assembly, formed a Ministry which endured only a few days. But since 1900 there have been several Labour Governments in the Commonwealth, and in every State.

The growth of manufacturing industries naturally brought into existence a number of laws regulating factories. Much attention was directed to legal methods of settling disputes between employers and workers. The Victorian Wages Board system did not, however, originate from a desire to prevent strikes, though it has been used for that purpose, but as a means of suppressing 'sweating' in certain industries. Under cover of protective duties trades had sprung up in which three was fierce competition to supply a very limited market, and the inquiries of a Commission showed that the remuneration of labour in them was miserably low. In 1895, therefore, Alexander Peacock, the minister respo9nsible for factory inspection in the Ministry of the George Turner, devised the plan of giving power to the Government to appoint a wages board for any industry in which it appeared desirable that wages should be fixed by such an agency. A Walges Board consisted of an equal number of members representing employers and employed -'a jury of trade experts' -presided over by a chairman who was not interested in the industry affected. It might fix wages, hours of labour, and piece-work rates, and lay down rules for the conduct of the industry; and its determinations had the force of law. The system proved successful in the 'sweated' industries, and has since been greatly extended; as that in 1923 there were 175 Wages Boards operating in Victoria. The alternative to the Wages Board method of regulating wages and conditions of labour is the Arbitration Court method, which has been preferred by some States. These methods have been adopted since the rise of the Labour Party as a political force.

Education in Australia virtually has no history till after constitutional government was inaugurated. There were of course schools before then, and there were inquiries and experiments, but no real educational policy. The convict schoolmaster was at first in charge. His advertisements may be read on early Sydney newspapers; an excellent education offered at moderate fees; classics extra! Robert Lowe directed attention to the need for an improvement in 1844, when a committee under his presidency reported that more than half the children in New South Wales received no education whatever. The establishment of a Board of National Education in 1848 brought about a substantial improvement. But it was Henry Parkes, by the Public Schools Act of 1867, who set in operation the system which contin7ued to satisfy the demands of the country till recent times, when fresh impulses were given to educational effort by a radical improvement of method, a clearer perception of aim, and a sounder system for training teachers.

The strenuous souls who fought for protection, land reform, the ballot, and manhood suffrage in the stormy years after 1855, had an educational ideal likewise. The educational system of the State must be 'free, compulsory, and secular.' In Victoria their policy was embodied in a bill introduced by Wilberforce Stephen in 1872. It set up a Department of Public Instruction, it made school attendance obligatory, it provided for opening schools throughout the country, and it prohibited teachers from giving other than secular instruction to the scholars. The Act, which came into force in 1873, has had many assailants, and the educational system of Victoria has in later years been very greatly improved, but fundamentally it remains as it was established under Wilberforce Stephen's measure. In all the Australian States there is provided a clear and fairly easy path for the studious youth from the State school to the University.

Not the least of good reasons for holding the name of Wentworth in remembrance is that he was the initiator of the movement for the founding of the first Australian University, that of Sydney. He brought the subject before the Legislative Council in 1849, and three years later had the satisfaction to witness the opening of the institution. The University of Melbourne (1853) came into being owing to the suggestion of Childers, whose first official post was that of Inspector of Schools, and whose work in that capacity convinced him that the corner-stone of any scheme for raising the standard of learning in the country must be a University. Latrobe, the Lieutenant-Governor, gave his cordial support, and when the scheme reached fruition the first Chancellor, Redmond Barry, watched over the early fortunes of the University of Melbourne with paternal devotion. The University of Adelaide (1874) was the third to arise, that of Tasmania (1890) the fourth. The Universities of Queensland (1919) and Western Australia (1911) were the latest-born seats of the higher learning to be founded. All of them admit women to their degrees, following the example set by Melbourne, which took this step at the instance of the distinguished historian Charles Henry Pearson. In 1879, Pearson, while Minister of Education of Victoria, introduced a bill which provided that the degrees and diplomas granted by the University should be available to both sexes. As the bill did not pass in that year, owing to pressure of parliamentary business, the Council of the University forthwith decided to admit women to degree courses. Pearson's bill was introduced again in 1880 in order to remove any doubt as to the legality of the University's action, and was passed by the legislature. Legislation for a similar purpose was passed in respect to the University's action, and was passed by the legislature. Legislation for a similar purpose was passed in respect to the University of Adelaide in 1880.

All the Universities are supported by Government grants, and some of them have also benefited from generous gifts by wealthy citizens. The Challis bequest gave Sydney an endowment of over a quarter of a million pounds, and the Russell bequest added an additional hundred thousand pounds to he funds. Adelaide received nearly a hundred thousand pounds from Sir Thomas Elder. The teaching functions have been aided by these and other endowments, and research has been promoted not only by the encouragement of prizes, but also under the inspiration of men whose contributions to knowledge have won for themselves distinction and for their Universities honour throughout the world of culture. The early student of Melbourne who listened to the lectures of Hearn on constitutional history sat at the feet of a master whose work was incomparably excellent in its day and is still important. A Sydney student in later times might pursue his work in geology under the direction of the discoverer of the south magnetic pole, Edgeworth David; and a Melbourne student of biology might learn more than his text books could tell him from one whose original researches have revolutionalized a branch of anthropology, Baldwin Spencer.

Australia is an offshoot of Europe, and its culture to European; but, in comparison with North America, which is in the like cased, it labours under the disadvantage of being remote from the source. During the first half-century of settlement the sea voyage generally occupied four months, or longer if unfavourable winds were encountered; and the discovery of a route which greatly shortened the time did not occur until the steamship was on the point of displacing the sailing vessel in the passenger traffic. It was in the forties of the nineteenth century that the American naval lieutenant, M. F. Maury, conducted his important scientific researches into the courses of winds and currents, and showed that if captains of ships outward bound from England to Australia, instead of running across the Indian Ocean from the Cape of good Hope almost in a direct line, would dip down into the latitude of 48 degrees south, they would invariably meet with strong westerly winds and long rolling seas which would carry them forward very rapidly. By following his route, sailing ships made astonishingly quick runs. The James Baines in 1854 ran from Liverpool to Melbourne in sixty-three days and returned by way of Cape Horn to Liverpool in sixty-nine days, making the circuit of the globe in one hundred and thirty-two days. The Marco Polo and other clipper ships famous in their day cut down the old sailing time by one-half. But mariners had only discovered how much more dependable the winds might be than their predecessors had supposed, when steam began to enable their services to be dispensed with. In 1856 the Peninsula and Oriental Company commenced to trade with Australia, and in later years the Australian has come to think himself imperfectly served if he is not able to read in Adelaide or Sydney letters posted in England a month before. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 shortened the voyage between Australia and England, and the increased traffic led naturally to improvements to the quality as well as the speed of the service.

The submarine cable has still more closely linked up this out-lying continent with Great Britain. There had been cable communication between London and the East for some years before the system was extended to Australia. In those days there was little co-operation between the colonies. Particularist lines of policy were pursued by each of them. The cable ought to have been a joint concern; but, failing that, the South Australian government had the enterprise to step forward and do the necessary connecting work. She had in her service a skilful electrician in Charles Todd, who superintended the construction of an overland telegraph line 1,970 miles in length, following Macdouall Stuart's track through the centre of Australia to Port Darwin. there it was connected with a deep-sea cable laid by an English company between Port Darwin and Java. The opening of this line in 1871 placed Australia and London within a few hours' communication. In 1902 another cable route was completed, linking up Brisbane with Vancouver across the Pacific. This line is the joint property of the Governments of Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and New Zealand.

The lack of co-operation between colonies which for too many years regarded each other as rivals instead of partners in the development of a great heritage had an unfortunate consequence in the era of railway construction. Efforts were made to arrive at an agreement to build to a common gauge, but they failed. Gladstone, while Colonial Secretary in 1846, recommended the adoption of a 4 ft. 8.1/2 in. gauge, but that was four years before the first line from Sydney to Goulburn was constructed. There was no railway in Victoria till after the gold diggings began, the first length having been from Melbourne to the Port (Hobson's Bay) in 1854. The first lines were owned by companies, but all the colonies afterwards determined to make railway building and railway policy state concern. In 1852 New South Wales appointed an Irish engineer-in-chief, who had been accustomed to the 5 ft. 3 in. gauge in Ireland, and who persuaded the Government to adopt that gauge, despite the advice of the Colonial Secretary. Victoria and South Australia, desiring to build to the same gauge as the principal colony, decided to follow suit, and both commenced to construct 5 ft. 3 in. railways. But meanwhile New South Wales appointed a new engineer-in-chief, a Scotsman, who was an intense partisan of the standard, or 4 ft. 8.1/2 in. gauge, and he left no stone unturned to bring New South Wales back to her first love, regardless of keeping faith with the other colonies, whose railways were now progressing with comparative rapidity, and who had already reversed their policy once in order to keep in line with New South Wales.' The Scotch engineer won his way, the 1852 Act was repealed in 1855, and 'the most lamentable engineering disaster in Australia was an accomplished fact.' (Professor W. C. Kernot, in Proceedings of Victorian Institute of Engineers, vol. vii. p. 73.)

The result was that traffic has ever since been incommoded and trade made costlier by a break of gauge at the border between the two States. By 1920 there were 22,000 miles of railway in the country, with connection between all the State capitals. The Commonwealth line from Port Augusta to Kalgoorlie (1,051 miles) was opened in 1917, completing a chain of lines from east to west.

An ever-increasing variety in the industries of Australia has enlarged the possibilities of life for her people; and improvements in agricultural methods have made country work easier and more pleasant. Much of the rough, heartbreaking pioneer labour has been done; not all by any means, but aids and agencies are available to the enterprising man of the twentieth century which were not within the reach of his forbears half a century ago. He is helped and encouraged by the State, which is the whole community of which he is a member. Every country has its own peculiar problems to solve, and Australia has presented many tough difficulties. They have been attacked with the energy and the adaptability which have been the outstanding qualities of the Anglo-Saxon colonizing genius; and the crowning result of democratic government in these circumstances has been the creation for the country of the passionate attachment of an intelligent and virile people.

A SHORT HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA - PART 6

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