19 OCTOBER 1861, Page 15

DEMOCRACY IN AUSTRALIA.

THERE are, perhaps, no regions in which self-government appears to fail more conspicuously than in the British colonies. They have all a decided tendency to become Americanized. The Canadian Legislature is frequently dis- graced by scenes of drunkenness and buffoonery, and is coming under the dominion of ultra-Protectionist ideas. The Legislature of the Cape will not listen with anything like temper to projects of taxation for the defence of those who appoint it. The Legislature of South Australia has entered into a contest with the Supreme Court, and actually summoned the Chief Justice before a select committee to explain a ruling from the bench, and on his refusal has appealed to the country to support the majority in coercing the judge. And the Legislature of Victoria, the richest and most populous of the southern colonies, seems habitually to nullify itself by its own violence, turns out Ministers so rapidly that a persistent course of policy is impossible, and drifts day by day more perilously towards the worst practices of American democracy. The suffrage has been widened till it is politically unsafe to coerce a mob, and one of the promises just made is to pay all elected members—that is, to tax everybody in order that opinions hostile to his own may be more influential. Ministers with vulgar names and no reputations—men who have been small tradesmen, petty farmers, and in one case at least costermongers, appear and disappear till all coherence departs from politics, and the most careful readers of newspapers throw up the study of Australian politics as a bewildering imbroglio. In the very last election a railway-ticket porter has beaten the Attorney-General, while Melbourne itself is represented among others by a carter. The mob, in fact, appears to be fairly at the top. Much of this discreditable confusion arises, however, from causes which are not peculiar to the colony of Victoria. Even in England, whenever the dispute involves great in- terests as well as great principles, Ministries towards the close of the struggle are apt to disappear very frequently. We have had Ministries of three days duration, a point the Australians have not yet reached. The colonists of Mel- bourne are going through a struggle which involves every man's interests to such a degree that compromise is impos- sible, and courtesy almost too heavy a demand on human nature. It is simply a question whether the people of Aus- tralia shall be allowed to own its soil if they can buy it. The Governor and his Ministry think they should, and because they so think, the Governor, Sir H. Barkly, is denounced as a popularity-hunter, and the Legislature as about to yield to the worst excesses of democracy. The substantive issue at stake may be very briefly described. The greater portion of the available land of the colony is in the hands of the " shepherd-kings," the squatters who were permitted under the old system to cover the land with sheep and cattle runs at nominal rents. The first object of these men is to keep down civilization, to have no neighbours, and no homesteads near them, none of that nasty affluence of buildings, chimneys, and farm-yards which so enriches a country and so annoys sentimental park-proprietors. They have, fortunately for the colony, no permanent rights in the soil, but they have had enormous influence, and have contrived hitherto to keep population at a distance from their flocks and herds by en- acting that land should be sold only in huge blocks. Some seven years ago, moreover, they contrived to obtain leases, and their first object in the recent Parliamentary campaign was to obtain a renewal of those rights. Availing themselves adroitly of every local cry, they gathered a majority together, and would, but for the firmness of the Governor, have car- ried their point. The laws, however, left Sir H. Barkly a weapon of which he availed himself to avert this calamity. Lands may be put up in small blocks under an Order in Council, and the Ministry issued the order, promising not only to put them up, but to rent them in sections of 320 acres, at 2s. 6d. an acre. The squatters were wild with wrath, and placing the Ministry in a minority of twenty compelled them either to retire or dissolve. With the consent of the Go- vernor they adopted the latter course, and the colony has restored them to office by a majority which, if they can only keep it together, makes them for the hour all- powerful, and certainly settles the land question. Of course, the defeated party assert that the mob is triumphant, and certainly the Ministry have some supporters as strange as those at whom Lord Grey stared in 1831, but we venture to believe the result will be far from a democratic one.

Society in Victoria wants just that conservative force which in a new country, as in older States, is found only in the possessors of landed property. At present society is composed, for political purposes, only of two classes—great squatters and city mobs. The squatters are conservative enough, and if they owned the land, and would let it, might make a very respectable aristocracy. But an aristocracy which has none of the rights and performs none of the duties of owners, and which keeps off population in order to breedsheep, is a privileged class of the worst possible kind, because it com- pels all others to regard it as mischievous to themselves, and so keeps up a never-ending political irritation. On the other hand, the city voters are too numerous, too irresponsible, and too liable to be influenced by demagogues to be the sole de- positaries of power. Even in England a constitution in which a very few great peers and a great many metropolitan members composed a large majority of the Legislature, would not be a very efficient or a very conservative system, and the Mel- bourne constitution is -worse than this. It is not proprie- tors and an English mob who possess all power, but proprie- tors and an Americanized mob, and Victoria resembles nothing so much as the State of New York as it would be without the country voters. The new Order in Council revolutionizes all this. Followed as it will be by the refusal of leases to squatters, it throws the soil open to all who choose to culti- vate it, and it is evident, from the intense interest felt in the measure, that thousands are ready to avail themselves of the new opportunity. Every man who so settles down becomes an instinctive Conservative, in the colonial sense of that word—that is, he becomes opposed to agrarian laws, to useless changes of administration, to city domination, to legislation in favour of labour as against capital, and to ex- cessive tariffs. For the moment, it is true, he may not realize his true position, and may think himself bound to support the Ministry which has aided him in all its designs. But the steady pressure of his position, and the interests it creates, will act in a very few years, and compel him, in spite of his prejudices, to throw his weight altogether into the scale of political order. This process has already taken place in most American States. Substantive power has there passed into the hands of the country population, and it is because English readers can never distinguish between their action and that of the city mob that American politics seem so perplexing. The mob can scream and the country folk can not, and it is because the former fluctuates as the yeo- many act or abstain from acting that we fancy the Americans at one time eager for peace and at another screaming for war. We do not know a more perfect antidote to the pre- ponderance of the Australian diggers and citizens, than the creation of a great class of yeomanry, who, though they may not outnumber them now, must, while electoral districts are unequal, return more representatives.

This process, however, must take time, and meanwhile there exists, no doubt, a tendency to democratic action of a bad sort, which requires to be carefully supervised. Unfortunately the means of securing supervision seem to be very deficient. The correspondent of the Times hints at repudiation as pos- sible, and undoubtedly in that case a revision of the con- stitution, in a restrictive sense, would be within the duty as well as the power of the British Parliament. But we doubt if an English colony is about to descend to any such depth. The mere hint ought to warn the local Government to prefer open loans, which enlist the masses on the side of regular payments, to any bargain with great contractors. But the danger cannot be immediate. Had Earl Grey not been overruled by an English prejudice, and the Colonial Legisla- tures composed of one House, elected by two sets of fran- chises, a strong Conservative force might have been found within the Legislature itself. The House of Commons, if the great peers were admissible, would be as dangerously Conservative a body as it was in 1820. As it is, the Upper Houses in the colonies are mere nuisances, able to weaken but not to check the machine. The only restraining force left is the Governor, and it is by a strong and cordial support to the Governor that the check can best be applied. Sir H. Barkly, for example, is said to be unwilling to sanction the proposal to pay all members alike £300 a year, one of the most evilly democratic propositions it is possible to conceive. The popular argument that payment enables poor but capable men, or men acceptable to the constituency, to enter the House, will not bear a moment's examination. If Melbourne wants a mechanic to represent her, what stops her population from paying him ? A shilling a head a session from each member of the victorious party would yield an ample allow- ance. There is no law to forbid electors from taxing them- selves for the benefit of their member, if they like, and no reason why they should tax others to pay a member they do not approve. The general practice of payment makes politics a trade, changes the representative into the paid servant, and almost compels the dealer in opinions, who is called member, to suit his wares to the taste of his customers. Sir H. Barkly, supported as he is by a strong minority on this point, could, if also supported from Home, undoubtedly resist this cry, and it is in this direction that the influence of the mother country may be most beneficially felt. We do not mean that every innovation should be always or for ever resisted, but simply that the Colonial-Office should play House of Lords towards these colonies, should insist on discussion and consideration, and compel a just discrimination between the permanent popular will and a momentary popular cry.