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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 62

Discussion

Discussion.

Sir Malcolm Fraser, K.C.M.G. (late Colonial Secretary of Western Australia): I have now no official connection with Australasia. I resided there for some thirty-five years, and I think I may claim to be acquainted with, at any rate, a considerable portion of it. With regard to this paper—this vindication and the action of Australasia in the past and up to the present time—I think Sir Edward Braddon has come forward in a chivalrous manner to splinter lances with the Quixotic detractors of that country, seeing that the Colony which he so ably represents cannot be said to rest under the imputation of having sinned in any of the matters under discussion. Tasmania—that most interesting and charming island, which I have twice visited—has gone on steadily, and I am quite certain that none of the charges will lie as regards page 101 that portion of our dominions. Sir Edward Braddon refers to the onslaughts on Australasian "manners, morals, and money." In regard to "manners," I think those who have been in contact and in friendly intercourse with returned Australasians must allow that many Australasians have improved their manners individually during their residence at the Antipodes. As to their "morals," I will not pretend to traverse what has been said; I am content to assert that they are, as a whole, a moral people. In no part of Her Majesty's dominions, I believe, are such large sums spent out of the pockets of the people for educational purposes, and that may be said to be done with the view of training up the young in the way they should go and of teaching them to lead good and useful lives. Now as to "money." This, we know, is a mercenary age, and I may be pardoned while I refer briefly to some causes of the present monetary position. Australasia really commenced its career about the time I went there—soon after the "fifties." For some years gold was being unearthed in millions. Everybody was engaged in mining, or in stocking the country, and in business, preparing to feed the anticipated influx of a greater population. At the close of those early years of what I may call the golden era, the attention of all Europe had been drawn to this important part of Her Majesty's dominions, and the Australasians, seeing that they could not undertake single-handed and with the resources at their command all those great works for which money was necessary, called upon the financial world in London to assist them. As you know, all the great works in Australasia are carried on by the different Governments. Companies such as exist in this country without number, and spend hundreds of millions of money, were comparatively unknown there, although some are now springing up. It therefore devolved on the Governments themselves to borrow money for carrying on these great works. I do not deny, and no Colonist will deny, that expenditure has been incurred that was unnecessary. Harbour works and improvements were undertaken, especially in New Zealand, which might have waited a little; and branch lines of railways, with the view to induce settlement and to bring traffic to the trunk lines, were begun perhaps prematurely, and in anticipation of a greater population than, as time has shown, would quickly come. It must, however, be remembered that the Colonists considered they had a right—and I will not maintain for a moment that they had not—to discount the future and to call upon their heir's and successors to aid them in the settlement of the country by the construction of railways, harbours, roads, and other im- page 102 provements, constructed from loan moneys. It must be allowed, I think, that this has been rather overdone—not, perhaps, in Victoria or in the other great Colony of New South Wales. I see that in New Zealand the present Ministry have announced that they have no intention of again going into the money market—at any rate for some time to come; and, speaking generally, although the Colonists may be satisfied with what they have done in the past, I think the more sensible-minded amongst them are disposed to believe that caution is necessary as to the future. The causes which have led to the present state of monetary affairs are manifold. In the first place, there is no doubt that in some of the Colonies money has been borrowed for and spent upon unproductive public works, and the people of the Colonies so affected make no scruple of, and here and there express, their anxiety about the future. Again, there is a great cause of injury to Australasia in what have been called "land booms." Nothing perhaps since the "South Sea Bubble" has been so disastrous as these "land booms" have been to Australasia within the last few years. Men have wrecked fortunes—true, some have made them; but millions have been squandered; millions have been invested in lands of which the intrinsic value was but a fraction of what was realised in the market. They have invested thousands in the hope of getting tens of thousands in return. The result has been that money has been borrowed from banks and financial companies to pay for these lands—not country lands, not good lands for improvements, but lands in the neighbourhood of towns. These "land booms" have passed over the Colonies, and, like earthquakes, left everything upset. Large numbers of people no doubt are suffering—temporarily we hope—from the effect. Another thing from which all the Australasian Colonies more or less suffer is that those who have made fortunes in the Colonies—fortunes amounting to thousands a year—do not spend them there. Within five miles from where we now stand immense sums of Colonial money are annually spent by absentee proprietors. These are some of the evils the Colonies are suffering from, and should be apparent. As a private individual, I speak without bias. I am not now attached to any particular Colony. I have great faith in the future of Australasia, and I hope and trust the people will generally exercise more thrift in the future, and will insist upon their Governments not carrying on in the reckless manner of the past in the matter of unproductive public works. Lastly, let the people of this country be assured that is the case; let us see those large absentee proprietors returning to Australia; let us hear no more about "land booms;" page 103 let rural not town settlement be encouraged, and the future of Australasia must be great.

Mr. W. B. Perceval (Agent-General for New Zealand): Our excellent chairman has unexpectedly called upon me to say a few words by way of comment on the able paper to which we have just listened. I am like the last speaker in one respect, for I am also an absentee, but I am only an absentee of very short duration, having been in London on the present occasion for only three days, but I am unlike the last speaker, because I hope to have my grave in the Colonies.

Sir Malcolm Fraser: I did not say I would not have my grave there.

Mr. Perceval: I am very glad that I have given Sir Malcolm Fraser an opportunity of making such an important correction. I quite agree that absenteeism is one of the evils the Colonies suffer from, and in the Colony which I have the honour to represent this was thought to be an evil requiring correction, and during the last session of the Parliament of New Zealand a small additional tax was imposed upon the absentees by way of warning. Owing to my having arrived so recently, I regret to say, although in one sense I rather congratulate myself on the fact, that I am not so well up as many of you no doubt are in what Sir Edward Braddon has termed the "atrabilious and unwarrantable onslaughts on Australasian morals, manners, and money." Perhaps one of the most disagreeable tasks that a man representing the Colonies has to perform is to read all the nasty as well as all the nice things said concerning the Colonies. To most of us here it appears I have no doubt somewhat like trying to demonstrate that a duck can swim to prove that Australasian finance is sound and that her men and manners are not as they have been depicted. In fact, when Sir Edward Braddon was telling us what was thought of us, I felt inclined to hang down my head, for I am a Colonist born and bred, and for the most part educated there, and when I got up I thought I ought almost to apologise to you for being a Colonist, and explain first and foremost that I am not a drunkard, that I do not blaspheme, and that I am not less loyal than any other citizen of this great Empire. Attacks of this kind are received in the Colonies with the scorn they deserve, but I don't think it does to ignore them here. Unfortunately, people all over the world are very easily gulled, and I have no doubt that the attacks which have been recently made have had some effect on the British mind. I think, therefore, the Colonies owe a great page 104 debt of gratitude to Sir Edward Braddon for his vindication. I look upon it as an indication of the trend of public opinion that, the Agent-General of one of the Colonies, perhaps the smallest of the Australasian group, should stand up in defence of Australasia as a whole. It is, I think, a recognition of the fact that the interests of one Colony are the interests of all, and that in all parts of the Empire we should join hand in hand to defend any particular portion which is attacked. If you will look at the map of the world hanging on the wall before you, you will see that a considerable proportion is coloured red. A very large part of that is made up of the Australasian Colonies, and it would, I think, be one of the greatest calamities which has ever befallen the British Empire if that fine group of Colonies was to collapse. But there is no more fear of the Australasian Colonies collapsing than there is of the British Empire falling to pieces. Do not be led away by statistics. There is nothing more misleading than the comparison of the statistics of an old and of a new country. The conditions are not similar, and it is very difficult indeed to make comparisons from these statistics which have any real value. You would be able to apparently prove almost anything by such a process, but such proof would probably be worthless. The figures which have been quoted by Sir Edward Braddon are convincing to my mind—and I think to the mind of any reasonable man—that the wealth and resources of Australasia are enormous, and that her capacity for meeting her engagements is much in advance of her obligations. Reference has been made to my own Colony, New Zealand. We have gone through a troublous time, no doubt, and I believe that troublous times now and again will visit the Colonies just like other places. You can quite understand that a sudden stoppage of the expenditure of borrowed money is a great strain on any Colony; but it has given New Zealand an opportunity of demonstrating to the world that she can do without borrowed money, that she has since the cessation of borrowing increased her area of settled land, her exports and her revenue, and that although a certain portion of the floating population has left her shores she has been able to root on the soil another portion of the population. All this shows that the Colony is made of stuff which will enable her to keep in the right track and to triumph over all her difficulties. You must remember that the Colonies are composed of Englishmen, that they have all the aspirations of Englishmen, the same' grit' as Englishmen, and the same qualities which have built up the British Empire will make the Colonial Empire. We are not drunkards and blasphemers; we page 105 are not disloyal, but a steady, hard-working and thrifty people. I will venture to say that there has been as much rejoicing over the recent announcement of the royal betrothal on the other side of the world as there has been on this. On behalf of my own Colony I beg once more to thank Sir Edward Braddon for his able vindication of Australasia, and you, ladies and gentlemen, for the attention you have paid to my remarks.

Mr. D. Christie Murray: I am in a sense venturing into the lion's den, for I am one of those assumed defamers of the Colonies who have been denounced by Sir Edward Braddon—one of those "gnat-like critics"—one of those "mosquitoes of the press "—one of those dreadful slanderers of my own race and blood who have been making mischief between the Mother Country and the Colonies. But I can trust to the fair play of this assembly whilst I deal with a few facts. The first allusion the lecturer made to me is to the effect that I have been dubbed a "globe-trotter," and have been hurt by that characterisation of myself. May I ask Sir Edward Braddon how he knows that? I have not been hurt in that way—I have assuredly never told him so—and have never anywhere published such a statement. He says—I cite his words—"He 'did' Australia, that requires years of study, in a few months," and he further tells you that I was engaged in occupations which during the greater part of my stay prevented me from finding opportunity for the observation of the problems presented by the Colonies. Now how does the case stand? I spent twenty-one months in the Australias. During five of those months I was engaged in lectures and acting, and the remaining sixteen months were for the most part given up to almost incessant travel and to close observation. I did my work faithfully, and, to my own belief, well. The man who has tried to do his honest best has a right to defend himself when he is attacked. The distinct charge against me is, first, that my visit to the Colonies was too rapid and hasty to permit of observation; and, next, that I was engaged in occupations that forbade observation. Now when a man has spent the greater part of two years in a country he is not fairly to be described as having paid it a hurried visit, and, as a fact, my occupations were never of such a nature as to stand between me and the observations I desired to make. In one of my Contemporary articles I wrote: "There is no country in which so high a condition of general comfort, so lofty a standard of proved intelligence, and such large and varied means to intellectual excellence exist." I have been charged with over-praising the Colonies, as well as with condemning them beyond all measure; but does page 106 Sir Edward Braddon dispute the truth of this passage? or does the passage itself sound like the statement of an enemy? But I go on to say: "there is no country in which these things exist side by side with so much turbulence, so lax a commercial morality; and such over-charged statistics of drunkenness, crime, and violence." I will put the matter before you in a nutshell. You have been warned not to trust to statistics, and I am told that Mr. Hayter, the eminent statist of Victoria, is wrong in declaring that .59 gallon per head of population represents the amount of spirits consumed in the United Kingdom, while 1.15 represents the amount consumed in New South Wales, 1.32 in Victoria, 1.46 in Western Australia, and l.59 in Queensland. All I can say is that these figures are in Mr. Hayter's book, which is issued by Government authority and sold by Government authority in Melbourne. They are there to be found by anyone who chooses to look for them. The statement, if inaccurate, ought to be removed, and if it be inaccurate, I claim to have been of some service in calling attention to its existence in a work whose figures ought to be absolutely irrefutable. I am here on my defence. Nothing can possibly excuse a man who wantonly, or even carelessly, does anything which can tend to separate the dependencies of England from the Mother Country. The man who stirs a hand with that hope, or who, by any action, runs a risk of helping in so foolish a cause, is a traitor to his country and his blood. If I believed that I had spoken one untrue word I would withdraw it here, and now, and apologise for it. I do not stand here to claim omniscience or to prove my own impeccability. I do not even hold a brief, as Sir Edward Braddon does, but I ask your indulgence for a minute or two whilst I lay before you the facts on which I rely for the support of my own observations. Mr. Hayter sets down the deaths resulting from excessive drinking as being 113 in the million in Australasia, as against 46 in England and Wales. That is the highest average in the world, if we except Denmark, and about Denmark I have no other statistics than those which relate to the great towns alone. Mr. Hayter says that since 1880, "since the Colony became more prosperous," arrests for drunkenness in Victoria have been constantly on the increase. I am told by Sir Edward Braddon that my estimate of Colonial crime is rendered abortive by the fact that 64 per cent, of Australasian imprisonments are for periods of less than fifteen days; but I think it likely that Sir Edward Braddon knows as well as I do that this estimate will bear very close comparison with the records of sentences in France, in Germany, the United States, and the United page 107 Kingdom. Again, Sir Edward tries to confuse the charge of turbulence by urging that I deal only with the figures of arrest. That is not so; I do not deal with the figures for arrest or even with the figures for commitment. I deal only with the figures relating to actual sentences passed, and I adhere to my statement that in New South Wales the convictions and consequent imprisonments for crimes of violence are four times as numerous as they are at home. (A voice: "Bosh!") You may cry "Bosh" if you will; but the figures shall convict you. There is a matter more serious still. Mr. Hayter will tell you that homicide in Victoria is as two to one against homicide in the United Kingdom; in Queensland it is six to one; in Western Australia it is twelve to one; in New South Wales it is three to one; in New Zealand, Tasmania, and South Australia it is one to one. In the year 1888 one person in Victoria for every 57 was committed for drunkenness. These figures are official, and if I distort them I am so easily open to conviction that I am either an ass beyond conception or a liar below contempt. If Mr. Hayter is thus systematically inaccurate, kick him out, and be thankful to me for having shown you what a blunderer he is. But, ladies and gentlemen, I have it in black and white, on the highest authority that England can offer me—I have the letter now in my possession—I am assured by that high authority that in all matters relating to the Colonies Mr. Hayter's figures may be relied upon with absolute confidence. Sir Edward Braddon has had a little joke against me. He has quoted those words of mine, "A teamster in a tight place will shoulder a novice out of the way with a 'Let me get at 'em,' and will at once begin to curse so horribly that for very shame's sake the dumb creature in his charge will move." Sir Edward Braddon wants to know what is to be done with a man who believes that bullocks blush and understand bad language. I want to know what is to be done with a critic who attributes such a preposterous meaning to a jest. In the printed copy of the lecture which I hold I find the words ' for very shame's sake' italicised. The italics are the lecturer's—not mine. I will promise this one thing, solemnly and faithfully—I will never, in the whole course of my life, try a joke on Sir Edward Braddon any more. In conclusion, I will say that in the articles I wrote about Australasia I tried to differentiate accurately the criminal and the non-criminal classes. I lamented, and I still lament, as one of the causes of Colonial dissatisfaction the fact that we are constantly sending over to the Colonies our most dangerous incapables. If any one of us has a semi-lunatic, a helpless drunkard, or a hopeless blackguard in the shape page 108 of a son, we send him to the Colonies. I denounced that as a bitter injustice, and I denounce it here. In the course of my own travels I came upon a score or more of hopeless good-for-nothings whom I had known at home, and if that were one man's experience one may guess what the real facts are. I know perfectly well that a great portion of Colonial crime is not due to the native-born Colonials, and for that fact there is an excellent reason. The imported adult population—I am not prepared with the actual figures—is, in proportion to the adult population born in the Colonies, enormous. That imported population is often uncultured, rough, and even blackguardly, and it does a great deal of mischief. And now for a final word. It has been the business of my life to observe. For a year and nine months I went the round of the Colonies, and I have reported honestly what I saw and know. I have not traduced Australia; I am not an enemy of Australia. It is absurd and maddening to find oneself so styled. Great Heaven! the man who spoke disrespectfully of the Equator is as nothing to the man who could come home with a pique against a continent. That continent, mark you, whether it grow up under the shelter of the English flag or no, is going one day to be the home of a great people. In the meantime the population has its faults, and it is an extremely wholesome thing that they should learn them. I believe with all my heart, with all my soul, in the triumphant future of the Colonies; I believe that the acorn-fruit of the British oak, dropped in those far-off lands, is going to spring up into a tree so lofty and broad, so strong and so goodly to look upon, that even the parent oak may hardly bear comparison with it. I say with all my heart, "God bless Australia!" I have left out there scores of dear friends whose faces I may never see again in this world. If I have spoken unpalatable words I maintain that those words can be justified, and, if I may rival Æsop's fly in presumption, I will venture to predict that in the course of half-a-dozen years Australia and I will be excellent friends again.

Mr. Dangar: I wish to ask the speaker to say one word about the grossest charge—the repudiation of the Public Debt.

Mr. Christie Murray: I never made such a charge. I am not so foolish.

Mr. Dangar: Not in your article?

Mr. Christie Murray: It never entered my head.

Mr. Dangar: Who did?

Mr. Christie Murray; I don't know; I am not sure.

General Sir George Chesney, K.C.B.: I have no personal page 109 knowledge of Australia. A great part of my life has been passed in a part of the world which is as unlike Australia as possible. Australia is one of the youngest countries; India is one of the oldest, and the circumstances of the two are as different as possible. But when Sir Edward Braddon touched upon one point I felt that we in India were to a great extent in sympathy with the Australians. He referred to a certain class of travellers who make hurried visits to a country, and who, receiving the greatest possible kindness, requite it by going away and abusing the people whose hospitality they have received. Unlike as India is to Australia, our experience in that respect is very much the same. I do not speak of the many visitors who come to India and whom to meet is a gain on our side, but of another class, who eat and drink of the best, who make every possible use of the residents of the country, who do not want to learn anything from them, because they profess to know everything before they arrive, and who come merely to crystallise a few crude impressions and put them down on paper. I speak of the class generally known as the "globe-trotter." In India we breed a horse which in some respects has great merits, but has one fault. I refer to the "country-bred" horse. It is said of this horse that you must look out, for when you are feeding it with bread it will sometimes turn round and kick you in the stomach. That has been the treatment, in a moral sense, that we have sometimes received from English visitors, and you in Australia have apparently received the same somewhat rough measure. To turn to the particular subject under discussion to-night, great stress has been laid on certain facts which are said to be proved by statistics. Now, we all know the old saying that nothing is so deceitful as fact except figures. Statistics are absolutely misleading unless you are able to draw proper inferences and to apply proper qualifications. Just now we were assured that certain statistics with regard to intemperance and crime were supported by official returns. I would wish to say upon this that, assuming the statistics to be correct, they do not prove the case. You hear that the quantity of alcohol consumed is so many gallons per head, but you have to count the heads—the heads not only of the men who drink the alcohol, but the women and children who do not. In Australia, a new country, the proportion of grown-up people to young people is very much larger than in England, and the proportion of males to females is also very much larger. It is, therefore, the old question of dispute as to whether the shield has a gold or silver face. As to the great question whether the rate of indebtedness in the Australian Colonies page 110 is quite justifiable, I do not think I gathered from the paper that the lecturer supplied what to my mind is the proper and decisive test. The question is not whether the increase of debt due to loans is increasing in a smaller or greater ratio than the increase of the wealth of the country. I think in these cases the proper and just criterion is whether the increase of interest payable on public works is greater or less than the increase of your revenue. If the increase of your revenue is equal to the increase of interest accruable on the debt incurred, I think no one can say your finance is dangerous or unsound. That is, in my humble opinion, the test to be applied. In the case of public works, it may be necessary to go on borrowing at a steady rate, and for some time the works may not give a reasonable interest on the expenditure. There is the indirect gain .and the direct gain, but so long as the revenues are increasing faster than the increase on the debt I think you are in a sound position. In regard to speculation and the losses, I would observe that they are only losses in quite a technical and partial sense. The losses on the Stock Exchange are not losses to the community. What one man loses the other man has put in his pocket, and so the losses on the "land booms" are not losses of substantial wealth. There may have been reckless conduct on the part of individuals, but the country has not suffered. And when you come to unproductive expenditure, you have to remember that Australia has been so far wholly spared from the largest source of unproductive expenditure—war. Happy has been Australia in that respect! When Sir Edward Braddon spoke of its boundless resources, he hardly said more than the truth. The resources of Australia seem to be absolutely immeasurable, and I think no one need have any doubt that they will in the long run and on the whole be well applied. One weak point there seems to be in Australia. I notice—and all persons who watch the progress of Australia must have noticed—one circumstance which does not seem to be reasonable—namely, the large proportion of the population which is to be found in the towns. If Australia were a great manufacturing country, and those towns were like Halifax, Leeds, or Manchester, the cause of this large urban population would be at once explained; but, considering that Australia is a mainly agricultural and mining country, and depends for its wealth on the produce of the lands and herds, one is forced to conclude, when we find so large a part of the community residing in the towns, that there must be some morbid inducement to produce that state of things. This seems to me to furnish a warning to the people of Australia as regards some part of page 111 their economic arrangements. In other respects, I think the future is a wholly happy one. You remember the old naval account of a speech made by a gentleman in Barbados in proposing the king's health. "Gentlemen," he said—he was a gentleman of colour—" the Babadian has only one fault—he is too brave." So I may say that Australia has suffered from "one fault"—her prosperity has been so far almost too unchequered—the climate is so equable, so beautiful, the country has throughout been so prosperous. At the most critical period of its history there came that wonderful discovery of gold which at once brought what would otherwise have come only by slow and painful steps—that prosperity which the country enjoys at present, and which, I believe, she will enjoy in still greater bounty in the future.

Mr. Matthew Macfie: As one who has spent about seven years in one of the leading Colonies of the group, I suppose I may venture to say that we are indebted to the reader of the paper for, at all events, stimulating our thoughts and improving our reflections, although we may not in every respect agree with him. My own attention while there was directed chiefly to the finance of the country, and there have been no Audit-Commissioners' reports issued in Victoria, at any rate, and no public accounts in my time, that I have not endeavoured with some care to study. The result of my consideration has been to convince me beyond all doubt that, although the resources of that Colony, in common with all the Colonies of Australasia, are practically boundless, yet the Governments are not altogether free from the charge of recklessness in the rate at which they borrow. There is one point we ought to carry away with us as showing that, with all his good intentions, Sir Edward Braddon has rather missed the mark. He would seem to give the impression that the unfavourable opinions formed recently in the money market in regard to the borrowing of these Colonies are due to recent writers on the general question, and more particularly to the articles of Mr. Fortescue. As a matter of fact, Mr. Fortescue's articles—I am bound to say I do not agree with their general tone, for they are decidedly too pessimistic—these articles, so far as they call in question the prudence of the Colonies in their borrowing, derive the whole of their force from the well-known views on the subject expressed by the bankers who are concerned in floating Colonial loans in London. Whether Mr. Fortescue and others are right or wrong, the whole mischief—if we may so describe it—is to be dated from the month of February, 1889, when there was a very serious discussion at the Bankers' Institute of London, and when a paper was read by my page 112 friend Mr. Billinghurst, who was most strenuous in his protests against the continuous and excessive borrowing, and in urging the desirableness, for a time, at any rate, of the Colonies doing as they are now proposing to do in Victoria and in South Australia—that is, raising debentures from within themselves. At that meeting another banker, Mr. Herbert Tritton, made no secret of the objection he entertained to the excessive borrowing of the Colonies and to the occasional, as he supposed, wasteful expenditure of the sums borrowed. He distinctly stated that the proportion of the amounts borrowed in given periods would seem to altogether exceed the increase of the population, the settlement of that population on the land, and the productiveness of the land by the labours of the settlers. I do not say whether Mr. Billinghurst and Mr. Tritton were right or wrong; but if there are persons who write against the imprudence—shall I say?—of financial management on the other side of the world, if any persons are to be fought as adversaries, those are the men against whom Sir Edward Braddon must direct his shafts. The real crucial test of the solvency of the Colonies with regard to the bondholders in this country narrows itself into this: whether the Governments have had a due regard, in their appeals to the London money market, to the ability of their exchequers to meet the increasing interest as it becomes due, and to deal with the loans as they mature. This cannot be too much emphasised. Sir Edward Braddon has said a good deal about the growing prosperity of Australia which is irrelevant. It is incorrect to say that Spain and Portugal are the only countries which have attempted to escape their financial obligations by repudiation. A little more knowledge of repudiating countries would have led to a different conclusion. It is the minority of countries outside the Empire which have borrowed from England who have not more or less repudiated. When, the other day, the Argentine Confederation collapsed, in the sense of being unable to fulfil its engagements to public creditors, do you mean to tell me there were not hosts of people there who were privately in a state of prosperity? But did they come forward and make a collection to pay the arrears of interest due to the English bondholders in order to prop up a rotten Government? So will it be if ever—which Heaven forbid!—such a catastrophe should occur to the Australian Colonies. The bondholders can lay no claim to the property of private citizens as security. There is no disguising the fact that there are politicians in those Colonies—I refer to members of the Lower House—greedy adventurers, who page 113 grovel to the working-classes in order to get the miserable pittance they aim at as members of Parliament, and when they get into power there is simply an advance on the same lines. They try to keep up their majority by making endless promises to Members for industrial constituencies and encouraging wasteful expenditure on what are euphemistically called "reproductive works," but which are anything but reproductive in many cases. The other day, when Mr. Gillies was Treasurer of Victoria, he declared to the astonished Parliament that the demands made on the Treasury by Members to make railways for the convenience of their constituencies would, in one single year, have necessitated the borrowing of twenty millions in the English market. The result was that a Commission of Inquiry was instantly appointed. They have brought up, I believe, one or two "progress reports," and the evidence taken by the Commission goes to show that there are railways which have been made at a monstrous cost, because of speculators in land finding out where the Government was going to make them, and charging exorbitant prices for the land. There are railways which (to use the words of Mr. Bent, the chairman) "will not be productive till Honourable Members are in their graves." This extravagance is largely due to the extremely democratic character of the Government, which encourages "log-rolling" and class legislation. These evils are necessarily involved in pandering to a single section of the people instead of promoting the public interests of the Colony, without partiality or distinction.

Sir Edward Braddon, K.C.M.G.: I think I am justified in saying that my paper has been very indulgently received, and I thank you for that indulgent reception. I regret that I have not convinced everybody. Apparently I have not convinced Mr. Macfie, who has uttered some extravagant things about Australian public men, members of the Lower Houses, who, according to him, are an exceedingly indifferent class of people, pandering to the working-men and so forth, and who, at the bidding of the labouring-men, before whom they grovel, invest capital in railways that won't pay until long after these people are dead. I venture to think that is rather more exaggerated than anything that has been said in any of the papers to which I have endeavoured to reply, and I should have thought that the words of my friend Sir George Chesney, and the fact that the Colonies, taken in the aggregate, are paying over three per cent, towards interest on money invested by you in the construction of railways, ought to be accepted as some evidence that page 114 these are reproductive works. It is not necessary for me to stand up for all the Members of the Lower Houses and all the Parliaments of Australasia. I can only say that in the experience I have had as a member of one of these terrible assemblies, I have encountered, as a rule, men whom I have been pleased to know and whom, I can honestly say, I honour. And I do not think the working-man is such an utter scoundrel as he is represented to be. It must be remembered that the working-man has, after all, like the rest of us, a stake in the country; he risks all that he has, even if that all be something less than what the rest of us have got. Mr. Christie Murray has unfortunately gone away. He has "left his reputation in my hands." That, I think, comes out of the "School for Scandal." But I will point out to Mr. Murray—who, I quite admit, writes without any obvious feeling against the Colony—that he is misled by statistics, and that he stumbles from one pitfall to another. He cannot deny that the amount of alcohol consumed in Australia is only three-and-a-half gallons, as against four-and-a-half gallons, and yet he wants us to believe from something Mr. Hayter says—with what qualifications I do not know—that the deaths from drunkenness are two in Australia to one in England. What, do you suppose that the Australian is such a feeble creature that he is killed off in a double ratio by three-fourths the amount of liquor that kills an Englishman'? Also he tells us—what I do not think you can believe—that the convictions in New South Wales for serious crimes are four times what they are in Great Britain. Now, the constitution of the Courts of New South Wales and this country is so very different, the dividing lines that distinguish more and less serious crime are so very different, that no possible comparison can be made; and you must observe that, while he has all the offences connoted by Mr. Hayter in his statistics—the offences of all classes—Mr. Murray, for the purpose of comparison, as regards England, has only the cases of the superior Courts, which deal with serious crime only. Mr. Murray, I believe, only spent nine months in Australia, the remainder of his twenty-one months being spent in New Zealand, and what he has noticed to the detriment of the people has been tinged, I am afraid, by his unfortunately falling amongst those "hopeless good-for-nothings whom he had known at home." I will now ask you to give a vote of thanks by acclamation to the chairman.

The Chairman: As I said at the outset, there is always some page 115 thing to be said on the other side, and that adage has, I think, been well exemplified in the discussion to-night. We have had a good discussion on Sir Edward Braddon's most able paper, and I beg to move a vote of thanks to him.

Sir Edward Braddon formally acknowledged the compliment, and the proceedings terminated.