A PLEA FOR AUSTRALIAN LOYALTY. [To THE EDITOR OF THE
"SPECTATOR.")
Sin,—Your last number contains a letter from "An Australian Cynic" commenting upon the exhibition of feeling shown in Australia after the attempt to assassinate the Duke of Edinburgh. It also contains an article on the same subject, the writer of which would hardly, I should think, object to being called an English cynic. It seldom happens that English newspapers find space to notice Australia, or that English people care to make themselves acquainted with Australian affairs ; and it is unfortunate that when notice is taken of them, the occasion should call for severe, not to say. contemptuous, censure. Still, let censure fall where censure is due, even though it come under the questionable guise of cynicism. Better too much blame, than too little.
But I must confess that to me the spirit which has been shown on this occasion, so far from seeming contemptible, has appeared, on the whole, in the highest degree creditable. I have little hope of being able to bring over you or any of your readers to my way of thinking. Nevertheless, as Australia cannot answer for itself in less than three months, I will endeavour to put the case in the light in which it strikes me.
We Englishmen at home are of all men most devoid of imagina- tion. We spend our lives on soil teeming with tradition, where the very shape or colour of every brick and stone tells its story of the past, and may be a silent but ever-present reminder of some especially honoured friend or hero, some favourite struggle lost or won. But we do not know how much these associations are bound up with us; we cannot tell, till we try, how ill we can dis- pense with them. I do not believe we have the least idea of the fidelity with which Australians preserve old memories; how tena- ciously they cling to their right of inheritance in the history of the past. At first it may be that an emigrant is altogether en- grossed with the occupations of the moment. Ile must get his bread; he must strike his roots into the new soil ; he has no time to sit down and think. But as he grows older, when he finally makes up his mind to make the new country his home, old memories and old attachments return with immense force. An old weather-beaten settler, who after a life spent in hardships at last sees his children growing up about him in prosperity and comfort, will look at them proudly, yet half sadly, knowing that he has within him an inheritance which he can transmit to them only in part, doubting whether after all a dinner of herbs amongst the old scenes and the old traditions, sus- taining (so he fancies) the old beliefs, is not better than a stalled ox without them. No one who has not experienced Australian hospitality can imagine the jealous care which they take of a chance visitor from England, how distressed and almost angry a settler will be if a visitor, although an utter stranger, puts up at an inn, instead of going to his house. And as you talk to him, the chances are he will speak sadly, even bitterly, of the carelessness, the indifference of people at home to their Australian Colonies. They do not know even by name one colony from another. Melbourne and Sydney are set down as places where a revolver is as necessary as an umbrella in London ; their populations as composed mainly of convicts, runaways from Europe, dishonest demagogues, or mer- chants who care to remain only till they have made their fortunes. But what he will complain of most bitterly is that a school has
grown up in England which says, "Let the Colonies go. All we want of them is wool and gold. All they want of us is a market. What we both want is wealth. We can get this as well separate
as together, perhaps better. Traditions, loyalty to the throne, willingness to share danger as well as security, war as well as peace, with the old country,—all this is sentimental rubbish. We have almost got rid of this sort of thing at home, they must have quite got rid of it at the Antipodes."
This, I believe, is false slander. As such, I believe it has been
felt, and felt keenly, by the vast majority of Australians. Can you, then, wonder that when the news came that the Queen was sending out one of the Princes, not selfishly, for his own benefit or for that of the Crown, still less to confer any mere material benefit on the Australians, it came to them like a chance offered to a maligned man to clear himself from a false charge,—like light thrown on a dark place ? And so, when the Duke, after weeks and months of expectation, at last arrived, it did not matter whether they did or did not find him all that they thought an English Prince would be and ought to be ; it did not matter if he disliked politics, was bored by balls and "functions," was indifferent to the beauty of the country. They refused to look a gift horse in the mouth. He was the Queen's son ; that was enough. They would do him all possible honour, and so prove that they were loyal Englishmen, and cared for Queen and country as well as gold and wool.
And when the news came that the Duke had been shot at and wounded on their own shores, every one in a strange way seemed to. take it to heart, to be struck with shame and dismay, as though he himself were in part guilty of the crime. The terror of having to bear, as a body, the guilt of one wretched man excited them almost beyond belief. At Hobart Town, distant as Tasmania is from the scene of the occurrence (I quote from a hurriedly written letter just received) :—
"A meeting was convened within an hour of the arrival of the news by telegraph ; it was attended by every class and sect in the commu- nity. The large town hall Could not contain the assemblage ; they, therefore gathered outside. The first proceeding, before any resolution, was to call for the substitution of the Union flag for the municipal one. Then, regardless of order, but with the order inspired by a common sentiment, the vast crowd struck up the National Anthem. The effect drew tears from many eyes—the effect in part, the earnestness with which, under the circumstances, the Anthem was given forth by those who joined in it, melted them into weakness. And a second time in the course of the proceedings tho same irregularity was indulged in, without its being possible for any one to say that anything irregular was done,— the ordinary and decorous modes of expressing popular feeling wore insufficient to give utterance to that by which all were possessed. We burned with loyalty to the Crown and country, intensified by shame and indignation that the act of one bad man had made it necessary that we should wipe away reproach or suspicion from us. I am not guilty of exaggeration when I tell you that the news of what had been done by O'Farrell made many persons ill amongst us I dwell upon this subject, for to this moment it, more than any other public ono, agitates the minds of the people,—but baying done so for this simple reason, let me ask you as a recent visitant, to do something in our vindication. We are English,—that is, national,—in our sentiments, and not as the result of calculation, but simply because we have not ceased to be and to feel as Englishmen. Our Tasmanianism is an accident of no more qualifying influence upon our feelings in what relates to the honour and integrity of the mother country, than the circumstance might have of being Kentish men."
Strange words these, to come, as they do, not from a hot-headed boy, but from a cool, experienced politician, a reader of solid books, a grave paterfamilias, a hater of public meetings, who, when the Duke was in Hobart Town, was ready to escape into the country, rather than face the fuss and bustle and (to him) annoyance of • festivities and "functions." And column after column of the Australian papers tell the same story. I do not believe, since the news of Waterloo came to England, that any body of Englishmen have been heated to so intense and so unanimous a pitch of enthu- siasm. Nor would it be possible to name any such manifestation more unmixed with selfishness. For ostentatious loyalty there are no rewards or honours in Australia, whatever there may be for ostentatious democracy. I am no believer in the Vox populi vox Dei doctrine. But surely such an outburst as this is a phenomenon at least worthy of patient examination. What is to be said of the discernment or of the charity of a writer who can dismiss it with a passing sneer as "the starved appetite for rank " ?
How "An Australian Cynic" can say that there is "not a tittle of evidence that a single colonist of New South Wales, native or immigrant, has ever harboured a thought of treason" I am at a loss to conceive. I know little or nothing of what has been going on lately in New South Wales. But it is not a year since a Roman Catholic chaplain of one of the convict establishments, had to be dismissed for preaching Fenianisin to the prisoners ; to say nothing of the original statement made by O'Farrell himself, which it is difficult to disprove as to prove. I doubt if the absurdities and extravagances of the Treason-Felony Act are worth the pains "An Australian Cynic" has taken to criticize them. The Judges are not likely to allow the Act to be enforced in an improper manner. Its intention is obvious enough, and the blunders will probably prove to be harmless surplusage. Nobody expects much legislative wisdom from a House constituted as the Lower House of New South Wales is. Nor is the Upper House likely to be much better, since it consists, not of members chosen by a superior constituency, like the Victorian Upper House, but of nominees ostensibly of the Governor, but in reality of successive administrations. Nor ought we at home to be too ready to ridicule their legislation, when we recollect that it is we who are responsible for their Constitution. It was we who at a time of transition and excitement in Australia, allowed our Par- liament and Ministers to pitchfork out to New South Wales a rash, ill-considered scheme, from which, in the opinion of many, the colony has been suffering ever since.
"An Australian Cynic" complains of the newspapers and the public at Sydney for not being more interested about a murder of five people which has been committed in the interior. Does he mean to imply that the police are supine in the matter, and need stimulus, or that the existing law is inadequate to meet the case ? If not, why ought such a topic to be enlarged upon? Ought all blood- shed to provoke an amount of discussion exactly in proportion to the number of lives lost? Murder, unfortunately, is too old and too common a crime not to have been provided against as far as it is possible to do so. Fenianism, when it assumes the form of a conspiracy for the wholesale assassination of the most promi- nent persons in the State, is a new crime, and requires new pre-. cautions. I suppose there must be a sense (since so many hold to the dogma) in which all men may be said to be equal, though I must confess I never could discover any,—never yet having seen such a phenomenon as even two men who could in any sense of the word be called equal. But the common sense of all communities acknowledges that the lives of some persons are (to take the lowest ground), infinitely more valuable to the State than those of others, and when for this reason exposed to special danger, they require to be specially protected.
Political assassination is a new crime in England in our days. But if we go back to the days of Queen Elizabeth, we may be reminded of conspiracies not unlike the worst manifestations of Fenianism, which were met by our ancestors in a spirit not altogether unlike that which has just been shown by their
descendants in Australia.—I am, Sir, &c., Z.
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