no doubt it was due to the very wide difference between the two points of view from which i had seen australia and the australians, but i must confess that my first impressions were more pleasant than my second. naturally the happy-go-lucky-sailor lad who thought that the earth was his and the fulness thereof as long as he had a shilling in his pocket and a square meal ahead of him, would not look upon things in general with the same eyes that i did after twenty years of changing fortunes and the gradual fading of the “golden dreams of trustful twenty,”—or eighteen, to be more exact.
in those days i was, almost of necessity, a practical democrat living in a democracy which neither had the time nor the inclination to bother about politics; but now many experiences in many lands had taught me that democracy of[291] the political sort is more pleasant to read about than to rub shoulders with!
america has an aristocracy of blood, brains, and money which looks with open contempt upon politics, and has no more connection with politicians than is involved in the payment of bribes by its agents. australia has no such aristocracy, and everybody apparently goes into politics. in america democracy is a political fiction, and the person whom political advocates and managers call the working man is kept in his place by methods more or less moral but still effective. the real rulers of the united states believe, with bismarck, that popular government of a country resembles control of a household by the nursery.
in australia the democracy really does rule. it is the worst-mannered country that i have ever travelled through, i mean, of course, as regards the people you are brought into contact with in the ordinary course of travel. every man is as good as another unless he happens to be an official, and then he is a good deal better—in his own opinion, and much worse in that of the wanderer from other lands.
of course one meets, as i did, just as charming[292] people in australia as you do anywhere else, but these are the exceptions. the american, as i found him, no matter what his rank in life, was a born gentleman, kindly and courteous, yet prompt and practical, and just as nice a fellow whether he was inviting you to a banquet or giving you a shave.
now, with all due deference to miss australia’s many physical and mental charms and her rapidly increasing stature, i venture to suggest that she would not be the worse for a few lessons in social deportment. at present she appears to be rather in danger of becoming the tomboy of the international nursery. the chief trouble with her seems to be that she is so desperately anxious not to appear servile that she forgets to be civil.
one cause of this singular lack of manners in the conduct of every-day affairs may be found in the fact that the vast majority of parents—and particularly those belonging to the so-called working-class—consider that the end and aim of their children’s education should be the obtaining of “a good government billet.” the natural result is the creation of a huge army of officials who have never had any training in the social ways[293] of the world, who know little or nothing of business in the wider sense of the term, and whose education compels them either to do everything according to official routine or to leave it undone.
the fact is that australia is beginning to suffer from too much government. it is the most over-governed commonwealth in the world. as every old colonial knows, it is the interest of a large majority of the voters to have a governmental machine with as many wheels in it as possible. there is a curious likeness here between the middle- and lower-class australian, if i may be pardoned for using such a heretical word as class in such a connection, and the frenchman of the same social grade. to both the highest ideal of personal ambition is well-paid employment under government with a pension to follow; whence it comes that both these utterly dissimilar nations are cursed with an ever-increasing generation of office-seekers whose only object in life is to live as well as possible out of the taxes.
the australian commonwealth is composed of young and lusty nations which have bred a magnificent race of men and women; but they have also developed a form of government which is[294] far too broadly based upon that specious absurdity, the equality of man. in fact, in australia, they have gone farther, for another tenet of their political creed is the equality of women with each other and with men. one of the natural results of this is that, although the best sort of australian wife is almost invariably the political ally of her husband, her housemaid and her cook and washer-woman, who of course greatly outnumber her and are much more receptive of the wild-cat theories of the demagogue, have votes also, and use them—frequently with weird effect. education, experience, social standing, and personal character go for nothing. a vote is a vote, no matter who gives it. in fact this fundamentally hopeless system is worked out to such a deplorably logical extremity that those women who, through misfortune or intent, have crossed the borders of what we call here respectable society have the lodger-vote in australia. this fact is, i believe, unique in the records of democracy from the days of cleon until now.
it is, of course, only in the ordinary development of human affairs that such a system of election should not produce the best of all possible rulers.
some time after my return to england i wanted[295] to write an article for an english daily newspaper on the subject of australian politics. the editor declined to have anything to do with it. he thought i was, as they say, talking through the back of my hat, until i asked him whether he thought the australian politician was anything like the men whom he associated with downing street? he seemed to think that they were about on the same level, i then asked him whether he could conceive lord salisbury, lord rosebery, and mr. joseph chamberlain playing poker with travellers and strangers in a london club, and then having to be telegraphed to by the said strangers for the money they had lost to them? he said he couldn’t. i said it was a fact, and so it is. that is the difference between imperial and colonial politics and politicians—from which it will be seen that there is no comparison to be drawn between the more or less efficient statesmen whom we manage somehow to get into power in this country, and the person whom the male and female votes of the australian commonwealth puts into office over there.
some one once said that any government is good enough for the people who can stand it. that is[296] true of all countries, and it is so in a peculiar sense of the empire which all good englishmen hope will some day develop out of the newly-made australian commonwealth. but before that happens australia will have to evolve an aristocracy of some sort. the old territorial magnates of twenty-five and thirty years ago have been gradually squeezed out. some of them, the fortunate ones who located themselves on well-watered territories, and others who found minerals under their sheep pastures are still the highest class of australian society. the rest have seen their estates eaten into by the cockatoo selector and the person who went out with an assisted passage to a free grant of land in the hope of being bought off or selling his “improvements.” this process almost destroyed the best aristocracy that australia could have possessed, and the democratic vote finally wrecked it, for your true democrat never sees further than the day after to-morrow.
in fact, his political horizon is usually bounded by the next sunset, and the natural result has been that the balance of political power in australia has been transferred from those who have put brains, capital, and enterprise into the country,[297] to those who had nothing but votes to invest—and votes to-day are very cheap in australia.
the logical outcome of such a condition of affairs is that what the uneducated and irresponsible majority want they get. it is not a question of general utility or national prosperity. if the government of a colony does not do what the more ignorant mass of voters want, that government has either to give in or get out. as a rule ministers give in that they may stop in, because places are snug and salaries liberally proportioned to the labours which earn them.
the observant wanderer picks up proofs of this all the time that he is travelling, and the most significant of these is found in the very thinly veiled hostility of the various colonies towards each other. if you are in sydney you must not say too much in praise of melbourne; just as, when you are in new york it isn’t wise to say too much about chicago; or, if you happen to be the guest of a club in san francisco, you had better not descant too eloquently on the culture of boston. still, in the united states there is a healthy and unrestrained rivalry between these and many other cities. there is free trade from[298] maine to mexico, and from new orleans to talama. in fact, as an american senator once said in defence of the first tariff, america within its own borders is the biggest free-trading country in the world. for instance, throughout the length and breadth of the united states you can communicate with other people by letter or telegram on the same rate. now, when i got to albany, western australia, i found that i owed a small account of one and sixpence to a firm in sydney. the money order cost me two and ninepence. again, all over the civilised world, saving australia, a bank of england note is worth either its face value or little more. it happened that when i landed in sydney i had ￡80 in ￡10 bank of england notes. i went to two or three banks to get them changed, and i found that i could only get gold for them at a discount of two and sixpence on the ￡5, or ￡2 in all. i then went to the comptoire d’escompt, in pitt street, and got my ￡80 changed into english gold for five shillings.
when i came to inquire into the matter further i found that the australian banks had entered into a sort of conspiracy to defraud the unsuspecting[299] traveller who ventures to bring the best paper currency in the world into the australian colonies. for instance, you pay a deposit into the sydney branch of an australian bank, you take its notes for the amount that you may need in travelling, say, from sydney to melbourne, and when you present those notes at a branch of the same bank you are charged two and a half per cent. for cashing them. in other words, the bank goes back on its own paper to the extent of five shillings on the ￡10-note. this seems bad enough, but my friend the accidental american told me of something even worse. he was representing one of the biggest manufacturing firms in the united states. their credit was as good as gold anywhere. he paid a deposit in auckland into the bank of new zealand, believing that his cheque would be good for its face value throughout the colonies, but when he tried to draw cheques on the branches of the bank of new zealand in australia he was charged two and a half per cent. discount!
i once had a similar experience in the transvaal, but that was only what one might have expected under the then governmental conditions, i was[300] in a hostile country and i didn’t look for anything better, but to run up against the same swindle in a british colony was somewhat of a shock. after that, when i wanted any money on my letter of credit, i took gold because i didn’t see the force of giving english paper at par for colonial paper at two and a half per cent. discount.
i also noticed that if you complain about this sort of thing in sydney they put the blame on melbourne, and if you are travelling further, melbourne puts the blame on adelaide, and so on, and from adelaide they will refer you back to auckland, while perth will tell you that it is the only really honest city in all australasia.
there is, however, one subject upon which all the australian colonies appear to be absolutely agreed. this is the relative importance of work and play. they mostly play at work and work at play, especially the officials. australia seems to me to have almost as many legal holidays as you find feast-days in spain, and an australian would as soon go to work on a holiday as a member of the lord’s day observance society would go to a music-hall on a sunday, unless, of course, he happened to be on the continent.[301] still there is a considerable difference between the amount of work which you can get done in the several capitals of the commonwealth.
i came home with a man who might be described as the universal provider of australia, and he told me that he could do more business in melbourne in a day than he could in a week in sydney, or in a fortnight in adelaide or perth. my american friend told me that he could do more business in the states in an hour than he could do in a day anywhere in australia.
one reason for this, no doubt, is the climate. “that tired feeling” is very prevalent, and it affects the native-born much more than the home-born. in fact, british-born parents at fifty and sixty have more energy than their sons and daughters have at thirty and forty. all the conditions in australia are against indoor work, and in favour of outdoor play. hence the new commonwealth’s physical vigour is considerably in excess of its mental energy.
another very serious feature in present-day australian life is the craze for gambling. of course most of us would like to make money without working for it if we could, but with the[302] australian this desire amounts to a perfect passion. almost every other tobacconist’s shop is the branch office of a bookmaker, and you can go in and plank your money and take your ticket without the slightest fear of legal consequences. as for mining stocks, you scarcely hear anything else talked about unless there happens to be a horse race, a cycle meeting, or a cricket match on. this is, of course, only one of the failings of youth, and in some respects miss australia is very young. still, now that she is growing up into a nation, she would do well to put something of a curb on her youthful ardour for playing. sport of some sort is an essential both of individual and national manhood, but colonies don’t grow into nations on race-courses and cricket-fields any more than men can become permanently wealthy by laying and taking odds, or speculating in futures.
