WHITE AUSTRALIA.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 11806, 2 February 1904, Page 5

WHITE AUSTRALIA.

THE FEDERAL POLICY. FIGHTING SPEECH BY MR DEAKIN. United Press Association—By Electrio Telegraph—-Copyright. (Received February 2nd, 1.5 a.m.) MELBOURNE, February 1. At the Australian Natives' Association's annual banquet, the Governor-General made his first speech in Australia. He had an enthusiastic reception. Mr Deakin, responding to the toast of Parliament, dealt with the white Australia, policy. He denied that it was a narrow, local, or selfish policy. It was based on principles which went to the very root of the Empire, its maintenance, its strength, its progress. It was the very essence of Australian life to give to th« people the amplest powers of self-govern-ment, and it was absolutely inconsistent with the full exercise of those powers to permit the izitroduction of elements which could not be assimilated with our blood and our social life. Our Empire was a white Empire. He had yet to learn that the doctrine of empire had ever been held to include the doctrine of the fusion of these races into a crossbred nation. The ideal empire, as he understood it, was that of an empire capable of maintaining existing societies and peoples within its sway, and dealing out justice to all. The ideal of British statesmanship and the best glory of the nation had been equal justice to all its subject peoples. The Government asked that that policy should continue, for experience had shown that justice was best insured to the other mixed r.ices of the Empire in their own countries under their own conditions of civilisation. Ho concluded by saying: "We want a white Empire, we want white labourers, not Kanakas at Bundaberg, and Chinese at Johannesburg, we want white seamen not Lascars on the steamers on our coasts."