WESTERN AUSTRALIA AND THE AUSTRALIAN DOMINION. D URING the past week,
the Select Committee to which the Bill for conferring responsible government upon Western Australia has been referred has been busy hearing the evidence of Colonial and Colonial Office experts. Very possibly the information derived through these channels will enable the Committee to make valuable amendments to the Bill. It is, however, rather to the fundamental principles upon which legislation ought to be based, than to any question of detail, that we desire to direct public notice. Unless the attention of the country can be aroused, we fear that the views of a certain section of those who interest themselves in Colonial questions may be made to prevail, and that what is, in fact, a new departure in policy may be adopted unawares. Two opposing methods for dealing with Western Australia are, speaking in general terms, before the nation. That which follows the old policy adopted in relation to Colonies having a position like that of Western Aus- tralia, is to mark off such an area as appears fitted for responsible government, and to establish therein a free autonomous community, unrestricted except as regards the more or less nominal exercise of the veto. If this were to be adopted in the present case, the south-west corner of Australia, comprising an area equal, say, to two Victorias, would be carved out and endowed with a Con- stitution in all essential respects exactly similar to that of New South Wales or South Australia. This, there can be little doubt, is what would have been done without debate ten or fifteen years ago. There has, however, grown up a loud-voiced if not a strong party, in the House of Commons and in the country, which wishes to pursue an entirely new method in meeting the latest demand for self-government which comes from Australia. The notion of altogether " giving up," as they call it, the last great Crown Colony strikes such persons as monstrously improvident. The wider and more statesmanlike policy of former days, which saw no abandonment of the interests of England in endowing communities of Englishmen beyond seas with autonomy, and refused to recognise the enjoyment of complete self- government by those communities as a subject for jealousy, has given place to the feeling that the Mother-country ought to make a bargain of some kind or other before she parts with her rights over stretches of valuable territory. Accordingly, we are, for the first time since the Colonial policy of the old Liberal Party took definite shape, face to face with a demand that a series of restrictions should be placed upon the action of the Legislature which the new Constitution is to call into existence. One set of politicians is afraid that the Western Australians will want to exclude English immigration, and so is anxious to have a clause forbidding any legislation tending in that direction. Another desires to limit the power of the Colonists in regard to alienating the land of the Colony ; while a third is all for inserting clauses which will prevent the creation or continued existence of " squatters,"—a class of persons which the extreme Gladstonians regard as almost as heavily burdened with original sin as English landlords. In a word, there is a general notion that either to secure the remaining portion of Australia against a fancied desire on the part of the Colonists to prohibit im- migration, or to give scope for the carrying out of Mr. Henry George's theories, or to prevent the possibility of the intro- duction of " landlordism," or to guard against some other dreaded action of the local Legislature, the new Colony ought to be bound by statutory limitations and restrictions which are unknown in the other Australian communities.
Between this, which we may term the new system, and the old plan of granting Colonial Constitutions freely and without hampering restrictions, the Colonial Office has steered a middle course, and has produced a Bill intended as a sort of legislative compromise. Instead of taking a definite area, and within that area giving free government, it nominally establishes responsible government over the whole of the old Crown Colony, and then introduces limita- tions and restrictions which will prevent the Legislature of Western Australia from dealing freely with the greater por- tion of its territory, and will necessitate continued Colonial Office supervision over the northern and middle districts. No doubt these restrictions will not satisfy the upholders of the new policy, and they will demand further clauses limiting the action of the Colonial Legislature. With these demands, however, we do not desire to deal on the present occasion. We want rather to put forth what seems to us an imperative argument for altering the Bill so as to make it coincide with that old and well-tried policy which has hitherto governed us in dealing with the Colonies. In our opinion, Parliament should take the area which is comprised between the sea, the twenty-sixth parallel of latitude, and the boundary of South Australia—the area within which the present Bill contemplates no restrictions—and make that the autono- mous Colony of Western Australia. The remaining lands, comprising about a fifth of the whole continent, should be. retained, not for the purpose of establishing a new Crown Colony, but in order to form a territory wherewith to endow the Australian Dominion, which by this time next year will be in process of construction. Nothing served to consolidate Canada more effectively than the existence of the great tracts of land in the North and West of British America, which were handed over to the Dominion in order that she might make out of them new Pro- vinces. If we can give United Australia a substantial Ager Publicus, we shall have made it certain that, instead of a loose Confederacy, she will become a State in the true sense of the word. If the Federal Parliament has con- ferred upon it those high attributes of sovereignty which are connected with the disposal of territorial posses- sions, and with the establishment of subordinate com- munities, we shall be able to ensure that it will hold that place in the estimation of the whole Australian population which it is right that it should occupy. If, then, the present Bill were to pass as it stands, with nothing but a power reserved to the Crown of splitting off pieces of Western Australia, and of forming thereout new Colonies, a great opportunity would be missed, and a stumbling- block thrown in the way of adopting a form of federation worthy of the splendid future which is in store for Australia. In yet another way would the passage of a Bill hampered with restrictions prevent Australian Federa- tion. It is necessary, if Federation is to take place, that the federal units should move, as it were, in the same constitutional plane,—that is, should each enjoy an equal amount of autonomy. But the Australian Colonies, if the Bill passes in its present form, will not be possessed of equal powers, because Western Australia will stand in a relation to the Mother-country Efferent from that occupied by South Australia, Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania, and New South Wales. Accordingly, before Federation could take place, Parliament would have to be asked to make for Western Australia a new Constitution,—that is, to undo next year the work accomplished this. Everything, therefore, points to the conclusion that unrestricted responsible government should be given to a portion of Western Australia, and that the remainder of the old Crown Colony should be distinctly and specifically reserved as an endowment for the Australian Dominion.
While dealing with the problem of Australian Federation, we cannot help referring to a question which is even more important as regards the consolidation and the welfare of the new Dominion than the possession of the surplus land of the continent. We trust that both here and in the Colonies of the island-continent, public opinion will be far- sighted enough to demand that the law of marriage shall belong, not to the Provinces but to the Dominion. What we consider to be essential features in any system of law governing marriage, whether at home or in the Colonies, we have frequently set forth. But whether the United Australians will or will not be wise enough to follow English example in this respect, it is important that, whatever may be its provisions, there should be but one law for the whole Dominion. In the first place, Australia would thereby avoid the scandal and inconvenience of marriages being held as existent in one province and dis- solved in another. If, too, as is almost certain, freedom of divorce should cause a reaction in favour of maintaining a higher standard as regards the sanctity of the marriage tie, it will be far easier to provide a remedy by means of a general law, than by attempting legislative changes in five or six different Parliaments. That the good sense of the Australians will incline them to this view, we do not doubt. Since it involves no interference from home, it cannot be regarded with jealousy by those who demand full power to deal with all domestic questions. Again, the provision has to recommend it the fact that it has been adopted in Canada with the happiest results. We notice with interest in this contest that the Melbourne Age, on the day of the meeting of the recent Federal Conference, printed for the information of its readers a full and clear summary of the Act under which the Dominion of Canada was constituted, as a guide to its readers in the consideration of the sub- ject. The Australians are, in fact, perfectly well aware of the advantages to be obtained by following in the main a Constitution which has for twenty years been steadily gaining in popularity among those who live under it. No doubt in one or two particulars—such as the constitution of the Senate—the Australians will amend and improve on the Canadian Act. On such questions, however, as the maintenance of a common policy as regards the marriage laws, by placing them in the hands of the Federation, we may feel confident that they will avoid what all thoughtful Americans consider the one capital defect of the Consti- tution of which they are otherwise so justly proud.
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