"MAX O'RELL" ON AUSTRALIA.

Evening Post, Volume XLVIII, Issue 66, 15 September 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

" MAX O'RELL " ON AUSTRALIA.

4. Mr. Carlyle Smythe, son of the well-known theatrical manager patronymic, haa supplied the Melbourne Argus with copious translations of extracts from an article on "Australia and its People" in the Revue de Paris from the pen of M. Paul Blouet, whom most Australians have heard of, and not a few have seen. The witty Frenchman is not very complimentary when speaking of the Australian peoples. They are too fond — passionately fond —of pleasure and amusement, especially in the towns, more so than any other people in the world that he has seen. They are too fond of eating, too fond of tea, and yet in the interior they are, he declares, characterised by a prevailing sadness of expression, as if life were a burden and a weariness. Our late visitor is not complimentary to the working man of Australia, whom he describes as the "King" of that continent. And, of course, the following criticism is extreme, and rather too sweeping : "If," he says, " this working man were content with his lot, or if the country prospered under his rule, nobody would have anything to say against him ; but unfortunately he does not make any use of the inexhaustible resources of this immense continent, and he takes very good care no one else shall make any use of them. The working man in Australia, still more than his English cousin, is a good-for-nothing, idle fellow, who stops away from his work drinking, and is a hopeless spendthrift, who thinks of nothing but his own pleasure, and never troubles himself a scrap about the development of his country. He will throw up a good job just to go to a horse-race. He is by turns a carpenter, locksmith, bricklayer, gardener, vinegrower, carter, shearer, and, as a last resource, schoolmaster. He goes on strike, not to make money enough to set up for himself — not a bit of it. He simply thinks the more he earns the more he can spend, forgetting that it is what he saves, not what he earns, that makes a man rich. " The Australian principle of government ' by the working man for the working man ' is ridiculously sublime. These working men, -who for the most part have come into Australia with the help of the immigration societies in England, are to-day the very people who force their Qovernments to put a stop to immigration. Australia belongs to the working man. What does he do with it ? He hangs about Melbourne and Sydney while the whole country is crying loudly for more labourers to develop it, but the lubourers loaf about the great cities with their hands in their pockets, or lounge about the bars of the public houses. Here and there, while travelling through the country, one sees a prosperous little farm which has grown up in a few years ; but the owner is a German or a Swiss. Near the big cities one frequently notices a marketgarden beautifully kept, where not an inch of ground is left uncultivated. In an obscure corner of the garden is a hut inhabited by a patient, hardworking Chinaman, whom the Australian despises, but whom he would be much better in imitating." Thip, as we have said, is an extreme view, and then follows another, regarding women's work in Australia. He Bets forth the lives of the wives of working-men and of middle class men as lives little short of a perpetual domestic slavery. " Women servants in Australia," says M. Blouet, "earn from four to six pounds a month " — (scarcely correct "in the present hard times) — "but for a single word they leave their mistresses in the lurch crying out against hard times." And what is the remedy which this critical visitor propounds ? It will, we fancy, astonish even the modern woman, to say nothing of of the current man. Here it is : — " There is but one remedy, and that is to establish polygamy. An Australian wife, like the spouse of a Kaffir, will soon have to .say; — ' Candidly, John, I have too much work to do. You really must marry another housemaid !' " Touching political life in Australia (by which general cognomen, it is presumed, he includes the islands of

New Zealand and Tasmania), M. Blouet says : — "Brought up with the Democratic ideas of the Mother Country, the Australians aro perfectly persuaded that there is not a man among them who is not capable and worthy of becoming Premier; but they have no mercy for the man who by his talent and cleverness has raised himself above his fellows. There is not a single politican in Australia whom I have not seen dragged in the mud, or treated as a buffoon, a robber, or, at the very least, a man of bad character. The form of Government is very good. This young country rules its own affairs just as it pleases. Democratic politicians in Europe play the masses against the classes. Democratic politicians in the colonies play loyalty to the Mother Country against the aspirations toward national independence. Nothing is so sad as to see an Australian Minister of the Crown trying to keep his position, now by bowing and cringing to the Throne, at another time truckling to the passions of the mob." On this themo he refers to the now ex-Premier of New South Wales (Sir Georgo Dibbs), who at the Federal Convention declared that the instinct for freedom was such as would, on small provocation, lead " the people to declare themselves for independence." This same Minister, he continues, was Knightel the following year, and fervently protested " before the English people his hope that the time is far distant when any Minister of the .Crown in the colonies will seek to break the silken bonds that unite us to Old England." On this Bubject of independence the versatile and observant Frenchman concludes as follows : — <% Of all the British colonies I believe Canada is the most loyal to England, because of the proximity of the United States. If Canada was at the Antipodes, the spirit of natural independence would probably be as strong as it is among the Australians and the South Africans. As it is, the Canadians think if they must belong to anybody there is more prestige in being English than in being American. " In Australia the national feeling is very pronounced, especially among those who, born in the colonies, havo known no other country No one yet thinks of asking for the independence, but the idea is simmering in the mind. At present the Australians simply ask the Mother Country to be good enough to consult them when a new Governor is to be appointed. Soon they will demand it. Next, they will choose him themselves. Finally they will do without him. England will be powerless to prevent the colonies the day they decide to cut the painter. It will be her fault for having given them justification for it ; but it will be her glory that she has also given them the power. In planting new worlds in distant oceans, and in teaching her children to build up these free and mighty nations, England has placed the whole human race in her debt. There is more glory in having founded the United States than in having conquered. The United States provide for seventy millions of civilised people, while India offers situations for a few thousand Englishmen." With this panegyric on the great expansion of the English speaking race, and the work which British enterprise has done, the article in the Eevue terminates. The article is only a general sketch, says Mr. Smythe, and not more than a tenth of the entire work, which will shoitly appear in an English dress, the translation being made by Madame Blouet, who is of English birth, possessing among her numerous accomplishments, literary and otherwise, a thorough knowledge of the French language.