THE BIRTHDAY OF THE AUSTRALIAN NATION.
lIl`E Queen, of course, always says the right thing on public occasions, great and small, but her Govern- ments are not so infallible. There is, therefore, much ground for congratulation in the fact that the right keynote was firmly struck in the message read by Lord Hopetoun from Mr. Chamberlain, on behalf of her Majesty's Ministers, at the inauguration of the Australian Commonwealth on the first morning of the new century. They "welcomed her [the Common- wealth] to her place among the nations united under her Majesty's sovereignty." That was well said. For the event consummated, amid so much that was fitting of stately ceremonial and public rejoicing, at Sydney on Tuesday, was very much more than a happy political agreement among kindred and neighbouring communities for the promotion by common action of their common advantage. In the very act of celebrating that agree- ment there has been achieved a new unity, charged, like marriages and chemical combinations, with possibilities differing in kind as well as in degree from those previously attainable by the constituent elements. This unity is the Australian nation. Its existence, perhaps, is not as yet by any means realised by all its members. But, none the less, it exists, a new presence and force in the world, which not only may play, but must play, a great part in the future history of mankind. Its part must, we say, be a great one, if only because it is a nation of British race and British spirit; because it possesses enormous material resources, in great part still to be developed ; and because it is, with the single exception of Russia, the nation of European blood placed nearest to the scene of the evolution of those tremendous problems of the Far East which cast so heavy a shadow forward into the new century. The Australian nation is British, with remarkably little admix- ture, but yet there can be no doubt that the different climatic and economic conditions under which it lives have tended and are tending to produce modifications of the British type of body, mind, and character, quite distinct from that which has been evolved in the Mother-countiy. Though fundamentally much the same, Australian points of view and Australian ideals in many respects vary from those which are current among us. In some respects the variation may for the present appear to be for the better, in others otherwise, but it exists, and it will probably become more clearly marked as the sense of membership in a great unity of their own stirs the minds of our fellow- citizens out there. We are glad to contemplate this prospect. The world, and the British part of it in par- ticular, will be enriched by the development of the British type on various lines, in letters, in arts, and in politics, and the Homeland and its dwellers will, we believe, have increasing reason to be proud of the contributions which our great daughter-nation in the Pacific will make to the thought and the practice of mankind.
It is not to be forgotten that the Australian type is itself by no means uniform, and that there are powerful influences• in operation tending to give it a large amount of diversity. Men and women bred amid the burning heats of a large part of Western Australia, the so-called Northern Territory of South Australia, and Northern Queensland, which make manual labour very difficult, if not impossible, to whites, differ very perceptibly from those who have been brought up in such climates as those of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, to say nothing of the tem- perate airs of Tasmania, and do not tend to differ less.
This consideration affords, beyond doubt., an additional ground for congratulation in regard to the successful achievement of Australian Federation. That event means both the present victory of centripetal over centrifugal influences all over the Island Continent, and the provision of conditions perpetually reinforcing the former at, the ex- pense of the latter, so long as reasouableness and modera- tion prevail. Henceforward there must be a constant going to and fro of the men most locally influential, between the most distant and contrasted parts of Australia and the Commonwealth capital, which is to be somewhere, not less than a hundred miles from Sydney, within the borders of New South Wales. Meeting, as they will do, in public and in private, in the Commonwealth Parliament House and its smoking-rooms and libraries, the Senators and the Representatives will be constantly brought face to face with the needs of Australia as a whole, as well as, and compared with, the special claims and require- ments of the individual States which make up the Commonwealth. The result of all this intercourse will be, we think, much strengthened by the working of one of those features of the Federal Constitution which differentiate it most sharply from that of the United States,—we mean the enforcement of the principle of Ministerial responsibility. On whatever lines parties may be formed in the Commonwealth Parliament, the fact that the Federal Ministry will be always liable to be displaced by a vote of the House of Representatives will operate to induce its leading members, to whatever State they themselves belong, to pay attention to the feelings and aspirations of those who are elected by all the other States. Therein, hardly less than in the equality of representation of all the States in the Senate, qualified as the effect of that provision is by the arrangements for dealing with deadlocks between the two Houses, we see a powerful security against neglect of the reasonable claims of the less populous States. And in those securities, com- bined with the mutual knowledge which will come about in Parliamentary life between the Senators and Represen- tatives from the most widely distant and dissimilar con- stituencies, lies, we cannot but believe, an adequate pro- tection against the development of any particularism dangerous to the Commonwealth as a whole. The evolu- tion of different State types will continue, and will in many respects be a cause of advantage to the body politic ; but they will not tend to become, as, if Federation had been much longer delayed, they might have become, aggres- sively isolated in sentiment and aims from one another. That being so, we venture to hope that the anxious efforts which have, perhaps, quite properly been made by the first Prime Minister of the Australian Commonwealth to include representatives of each State in his Cabinet, will not be regarded as setting any binding precedent for the future. The vital thing is that the Government of the Commonwealth should be well carried on, and it is at least quite conceivable that at some not distant date political and administrative ability might for a time be developed so much more markedly in two or three States of Australia than in the others that there would be a clear loss to the public service in not making up a Federal Ministry altogether from the material so indicated.
It remains to be said that the Home Government's ,message was also very judiciously conceived in its recog- nition," in the long-desired consummation of the hopes of patriotic Australians, of a further step in the direction of the permanent unity of the British Empire." The glory of that Empire lies in the fact that its strength as a whole grows with the strength of each one of its parts. The development of the Australian Colonies into a powerful national life of their own is viewed from the Mother- land, not only with pride, but with a sense of added security to the whole fabric of the world-wide realm of the Queen. If there ever was a time when such an event as that of the inauguration of the Australian Commonwealth could have excited any kind of mis- giving here, the story of 1899 and 1900 has made such tremors appear strangely futile and unworthy. The year of the final stages of the work of Australian Federation has been the year in which, with passionate enthusiasm, the States of the new Commonwealth have pressed upon us the aid of their best and bravest youth in the struggle for the vindication of British rights iu South Africa. It is in the light of that noble participation of theirs in the burdens and perils of Empire that we all rejoice in the birthday of the Australian nation. The announcement is very welcome, too, that the splendid similar services rendered by Canada, whose national life is now just a generation old, are to receive further recognition by a visit from the Duke and Duchess of York. With such supports as these daughter-States we may well face calmly all the anxieties of the future, believing that, in the end, yet a third united nation will be constituted under the British flag, happy in the enjoyment of British liberties, even where now there is obstinate refusal to abandon hostile and impossible ideals.
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