7 NOVEMBER 1868, Page 14

AUSTRALIAN LOYALTY AND THE NEW SOUTH WALES TREASON-FELONY ACT.

[TO THE EDITOR OF TIIE SPECTATOR:1

have only just had an opportunity of reading the articles and letters in the Spectator on the subjects named above. Permit me, if not too late, to add a few words to the discussion.

Our loyalty is a compound feeling. It may embody somewhat of a "starved appetite" for rank. It may look much to signs and symbols. It does rest upon a strong regard for the unity of the Empire (witness the attitude of the colonies during the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny). It does include a reverential attachment to the principles of British liberty. But beyond all this, there runs through it a vein of personal sentiment,—a feeling that we are all of kin, held together by a bond of family relation- ship. Hence, even among native-born Australians, England is known not only as "the old country," but as "home." Not only are we attached to Britain by pride in her imperial position, and reverence for the principles on which her greatness is founded, by an intellectual perception that the glories of the Empire are shared by its dependencies ; we feel for the mother country, as it were, a personal and instinctive love, because we belong to her, and she belongs to us. We love her "with all her faults," not merely because of her virtues.

Do not overlook this personal feeling in forming your judgment

of our actions,—in your interpretation of our welcome to the Queen's son,—in your censuie upon our display of passion when he had been well nigh murdered. It was this personal feeling, this instinct, that was wounded by O'Farrell's pistol shot. We recognized at once that the act was inspired by the spirit of Fenianism, the spirit that had attempted to carry war into peaceful Canada because Canada belongs to England ; the spirit that had prompted outrage in England itself to destroy the public peace in England ; the spirit that hates England, not merely because of her faults, but in spite of her virtues,—that aims at her humiliation or fall. Under the first shock we felt that an offshoot of Fenianism had sprung up amongst us. Before, we could scarcely have credited its existence ; then we began to ask ourselves how far it had spread, and what strength it had attained secretly, these questions being accompanied by the resolve that the thing should be crushed at any cost.

At this stage, the Attorney-General, in his place in the Legisla- tive Assembly, whilst introducing the Treason-Felony Bill, stated plainly that the Government had information tending to show that there was in the colony a conspiracy against the British Crown ; that there were people here in correspondence with conspirators at home ; that there was reason to believe that the Government, if armed with additional powers of search, might lay its hand upon papers, perhaps upon arms, connected with this conspiracy. It was under these circumstances and upon these assurances that the

Treason-Felony Act was passed by the Legislature and accepted by the people. You treat the Act as a monstrosity of colonial origin, and pelt it with hard adjectives, as if determined that this, the first appearance of such a novelty in British legislation, should be made the last. With the greater part of the Act—with all that was intended to be permanent in it—you should have been familiar, for the first seven clauses are (except as to local adaptations) a tranicript of an Imperial Act passed twenty years ago. You in England are living under the provisions of the second clause of this " monstrous " and " servile " Act (the third clause of 11 Vie., c. 12) which you condemn so vigorously, but of the pressure of which you have been all unconscious. Agitate for the amendment of imperial law, and then you may scold us for throwing up the principles of British liberty in copying it.

But still, you will say, there are the eighth, ninth, and tenth clauses that deserve all that has been said against them, and form no part of the Imperial Act. We feel no pride in these clauses, —on the contrary, shame. We should have deserved all you have said of us, had we adopted the principles of those clauses as permanent principles of legislation, just as the Imperial Parliament would have deserved even stronger censure had it permanently suspended the Habeas Corpus in Ireland, in order to deal with a probably temporary difficulty. We did not pass or accept those " un-English " clauses ignorantly ; we were not blinded by our passion as to their true character. Knowing their character, we gave them force for two years only. We consented to a temporary sacrifice in order that we might, as we thought, crush a new evil in its infancy, and so promote the permanent good of the colony. You have done so, and would do so again in England under similar circumstances. The man is not necessarily "insane" who submits to a few hours' blistering to save himself from dangerous disease. The Act was accepted by the people as an infliction which, bad as it was, they were willing to bear for a time, so that the soil might be purged thereby. The passing of it was a declaration that if it were a question whether Fenianism should or should not hold up its head amongst us, we were in no mood to haggle about the temporary cost of crushing