CORRESPONDENCE.
VICTORIAN AFFAIRS.
AleMotme, June 10, 1877. I no not know whether the catastrophe which has happened in our public affairs will make itaelf heard in London, where Colonists—that is to say, Englishmen who have founded pro- sperous States and built great cities—are regarded, as a rule, as having lost caste ; but the Spectator generally knows better, and I am moved to send you some account of recent events, in the belief that if you have the accurate data, you will be likely to draw the just inferences from them. For you are of opinion, I perceive, that the honour of the national flag and national name is staked in the career of a fleet full of peaceful emigrants to new shores, as much as in the career of a fleet full of their brothers dressed in blue or scarlet. You know, doubtless, that for the last two.and-twenty years—that is to say, ever since the dis- covery of gold brought out a democratic population—,e have had a land question lying at the root of all our public contests. Before that time the whole country (larger than England, remem- ber) was leased out to about 900 Crown tenants, who had good hope of turning their tenure into a fee-simple ; and it must be confessed not without reason, for the Colonial Office of that day encouraged and perhaps justified the idea. But when population began to arrive at the rate of 1,000 men a week, the project became impossible, and after a fierce struggle, the Crown lands were at length thrown open to actual settlers on wonderfully reasonable terms. One condition of the new law aimed to prevent any man getting more than a square mile of agricultural land by selection in one year. But the Crown tenants, by very questionable means, evaded this condition, and there are now several estates in the colony larger than any English duke's. For some years a small party Lave considered that all estates beyond a certain minimum should pay a direct tax to the State, as they do in all the Continental countries of Europe, in India, and in England through the property-tax. The party destined to pay, and their partisans in the Press and elsewhere, raised such a clamour as was heard in England when rude hands were laid on the Corn Laws. A great many worthy, ignorant people honestly believed that it amounted to Communism and robbery to tax land. The small party, however, gradually grew stronger, and received the important accession of men able to bring precedent, autho- rity, and original thought in support of the popular de- mand. At the general election it had a campaign like Von Moltkc's in Austria. The Government in possession, which re- presented the Conservative party, felt the force of the coining storm, and proposed a laud-tax as part of their policy ; but it was too late. The people were determined to have men as well as measures more to their mind, and an Administration which had a good working majority before the dissolution came back to Parliament with only fifteen pledged supporters, out of a House of eighty-six. The question of Protection and Free-Trade, no doubt, contributed to this result, and a strong popular feeling against Sir James McCulloch, who was once the leader of the Democracy, and has latterly found himself by stress of events at the head of the party of resistance ; but the determination to have a land-tax is mainly responsible for the result. You must admit that it is not an unreasonable demand that men with great estates, some of them owning a quarter of a million of acres fertile as the soil of Devon, should contribute to the burthens of the State, and that electors may desire this result without being Communists and levelers. But the wealthy colonists who live in London belong, in a great degree, to the -class which will have to pay the land-tax, and they will regard the proposal as the Duke of Newcastle or the Duke of Bucking- ham regarded the abolition of a duty on corn. When colonists abuse one another, our complaisant kinsmen at home, I am afraid, smile on our mutual railings and believe both parties. The Press here is written with good ability and a reason- able amount of information, but it is often truculent, and still employs language of insult and defamation long banished from English journals. Thirty years ago the Times declared, when Macaulay and Shell were made Privy Councillors, that those persons raised to be the Queen's coun- sellors were not fit to be the Queen's footmen, and our leading journal is still in the stage your leading journal had reached a generation ago. There is good reason to fear, therefore, that a wrong impression, partly honestly mistaken, partly wilful,- will
be created in England, if you and others who know better de not interpose.
The general election swept out some of our established reputations and replaced them by new men, and a cry is raised that we have got a Barebones Parliament, and as the natural result of it, a Barebones Government. A third of the House certainly consists of new men, but many of them are new men of a good type, and the Govern- ment is not so strong in capacity or experienced as a good citizen could wish ; but Mr. Berry, who is at the head of it, has exhibited notable good-sense and moderation since he was raised to power. The moderate Liberals, who bear the same relation to his supporters as the Peelites did to the Whigs twenty years ago in England, are only a handful in the new House ; but Mr. Berry asked the assistance of three of them, Sir Gavan Duffy, Mr. Service, and Mr. Casey, in the new Administration, and it was not his fault that they did not give him their assist- ance. At the elections, two men who would have greatly strengthened his party, Mr. Pearson, formerly a Fellow of Oxford, and Mr. Bryan O'Loghlen, son of the famous Master of the Rolla in Ireland, failed to secure seats ; and Mr. Higinbotham, long the leader of the advanced Democracy, refused to become a candidate. Under these circumstances Mr. Berry did the best he could, and certainly he omitted from his Cabinet no man who had better claims than those who were admitted. He has used the best materials the people sent him. The most satisfac- tory evidence of his good-sense, however, is the moderation of his policy, as set out in his speech on re-election. It has amazed his opponents and irritated a section of his supporters, but that is the inevitable fate of a man who intends to be just, and to succeed.
You will make the necessary allowance for party spirit and party spite, in discounting the alarm of the Conservative Press. This great commercial city in which I write, with its property as securely fenced by law as the Queen's Crown, and its popu- lation trained in the use of the noble, free institutions which they carried from the mother-country, is as little likely to be the scene of any excess under the cover of law, or in defi- ance of it, as the capital of the Empire ; and when the history of to-day is sufficiently remote to be judged without passion or pre- judice, I am persuaded it will bear comparison with the great struggles for political or commercial liberty in England. The experiment of working Parliamentary Government along with manhood suffrage, without the personal presence and incommuni- cable authority of the Sovereign, is full of difficulties. In all the Colonial Parliaments there have undoubtedly been occasional embroilments and mistakes, but certainly not greater embroil- ments or graver mistakes than occurred in the great Parliament of which they are only copies, at a far later period of its history than they have reached. The duties they had to perform were often of the most exacting character. They had to govern a. people gathered hastily from the ends of the earth, to frame laws for novel and unexpected contingencies ; at one time to control a too vivacious prosperity, at another to sustain the community under the languor of unaccustomed depression ; sometimes to- resist unreasonable demands powerfully backed, at others to regu- late clashing rights face to face in angry hostility : and I think that those who have been in any degree concerned in the task need not be ashamed of how their duties have been performed, and our future history will bear the same relation to the past as the
history of your own or any other civilised community does. C.
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