AUSTRALIA’S OLD MEN ELOQUENT.

Evening Star, Issue 7443, 11 February 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

AUSTRALIA’S OLD MEN ELOQUENT.

MR It. I’ARKES ON A COMMONWEALTH. I am asked at this particular time to give some expression to my thoughts on the political future of Australia. To a man who has actively participated in the public life of the Colony for forty years —since the movement for the abolition of transportation in 1848—the acceptance of the task is not free from peculiar hazard. What I may have clone, or may have failed to do, cannot, however, deprive me of the right of opinion or of intellectual speculation, with added light from the fuller experience and the more deeply-felt freedom of individual action which are ever the result of not idly-used time. But, withdrawing my thoughts from the busy arena of the present to survey the bygone years or to endeavor to forecast the work of the coming generations, I feel myself enveloped in a different atmosphere, subdued by the breath of sorrow and rariiiod by the severe light of imaginative truth.

I have filled my part with many actors in the not uneventful drama of our short historic life. Donaldson, James Macarthur, Darvall, Robert Nichols, young Deniehy, Cowper, Murray, Arnold, Forster, Martin, and a host of others have fallen in the path where I have been permitted to still press on. It is impossible to estimate the still living influence which some of these left behind them. The high sense of public honor which stirred the whole nature of Macarthur, the chivalrous spirit of Donaldson, the gallant heart of Nichols, and the strong grasp of fact and principle which distinguished Martin were of priceless value to our earlier constitutional efforts.

In trying to pierce the clouds and the shifting mists of the future we have no guides. Looking out on the wide sea wr search in vain for the barque which is to carry us safe to the destined haven. There is no room for doubt that we shall reach it; but hy what delays, false reckonings, putting into intermediate ports, and wreckage, who shall say ? The true factors in all great changes, whether bounds of progress or rebounds of misrule, are gifted men—gifted for good or evil. Nothing is so striking in the realms of imagination as what might have been in the place of what has actually been achieved. It Hampden and Pym had lived, the commonwealth of Cromwell would never have existed. If Napoleon had been endowed with a noble sympathy with his fellow-creatures, the result of the French Revolution would have been as different as light from darkness. Thus we cannot appraise the fruits of historic development except from a knowledge of the hands which sow the seed. The variety iu human organisations excels all wonder. A hundred men are elected to perform the same class of duties, but every one of the hundred is differently fitted for the performance of them, to say nothing of the diverse or perverse motives which miscredit his efforts. One fails to see the matter under notice in the light of his colleague, because, though he does not know it, lie is unable to think on the matter at all. His mind is in a frigid state and cannot work. Yet he will stand up and painfully string words together which only exhibit tatters of other men’s statements, or distorted scraps from other men’s sophistries. A man thinking on his feet is to him simply an inexplicable puzzle. .Speaking of the lower degrees of animal life, a brilliant writer of our day asks : “How could the oyster comprehend the flashing cruises of the swordfish ; or he, beneath the waves, conceive the flight and nesting of a bird ?’’ The separate and irreconcilable views of intellectual activity in each other are scarcely less marked among men. How often in issues which take root iu the public mind, and continue to uffeot the public welfare for many years, do we see hollow and gaudy declamation outweigh the forces of unanswerable argument ? At the time of the contention aboutadmittingMrßradlaugh to take a seat in the House of Commons a great speech was made by Mr Gladstone, in which the argument for admission was based upon the true interpretation of the principles of the Christian religion. The speech was much noticed for its power of true intellect. When the report reached Sydney 1 recollect showing it to a friend in political life, who, after reading it, said he could see nothing remarkable about it. He bad looked for tire bright colors of imagery and the shining phrases, but could find neither in the pure Saxon woof of Mr Gladstone’s speech. Rut in the translucent web of the choice and simple language you might see the live pulsing thought in all its masterful advances upon the field of error and fallacy, as you may see marvellous forms of life in the clear depth of a tropic sea. Without adopting Carlyle’s grim aphorism, we must be prepared to see how intellectually unequal are the men who, nevertheless, have often equal contributavy powers in deciding the destinies of States. Probably in the court of any despotic sovereign of the present age, the men of an impoverished nature and a loose grasp have, by one device or another, as large an influence ou the immediate situation as the men of proved capacity, unsullied motive, and noble aim. In a democratic Government the greatest danger to well-being is always in the democracy itself. Men could never he enslaved if they did not become the instruments of their own enslavement. If they sought our public virtue and did not suffer themselves to be deluded into accepting the counterfeit, the commonwealth would )>e safe. But it is but rarely so.

Where shall (lie weary eye repose When gazing on the gna', Where neither guilty (dory glows Nor despiciblo state ? Even iu the great free land blessed by Byron’s one illustrious exception, how near was the murderer of Hamilton to the supreme place of power and honor ; and if that blood had not been shed there was no place iu the Republic which Aaron Burr might not have reached. Whoever would venture to cast the horoscope of a selfgoverned people must first reckon with the probabilities of men of governing capacity appearing on the public stage. The institutions of the country, however cunningly devised for the preservation of freedom, are hut the dry bones of a constitutional polity until they arc clothed with the golden robes of brain and heart, the wisdom to shape “august decrees,” and the courage to maintain inviolate the national security. It is not a little remarkable that the prophecies of the greatness of Australia were tardy aud timorous for many years after the British flag was hoisted at Sydney by Arthur Phillip. The bitter raillery of Sydney Smith was hardly corrected by a serious notice of encouragement. Even the Cambridge prize poems of 1823, so often referred to, are for the most part barren of foreshadowings of Australian empire, if we except the last fourteen lines by Wentworth. The poem by Praed scarcely ever rises above the sufferings of the exiles and the barbarous habits of the aborigines. The beautiful lines written by Thomas Campbell about the same time contain the first poetic outburst ou the future glories of Australia— As in a miffed Hercules we trace The lines of eippire in thine infant face I

were the fine words of Campbell. The whole poem deserves to be treasured by every truehearted Australian. There could scai’cely be a grander provision of the coming nation than is embodied in the noble passage which follows :

Land of tho free ! thy kingdom is to oomn; Of -Tates with laws Lorn Gothic bondage hurst. A'd creeds by charter'd priesthoods unaccursed ; Of navies, hoisting their emblazon’d flags Where shiplesa seas now wash unbeacon’d crags; Of hosts reviewed in dazzling files and squares, Thdr pennon’d trumpets breathing native airs, For min-treis thou Shalt have of native fire, And maids to sing the songs themselves inspire. Onr very speech, zncthinks, in after time Shall catch th’ lonian biandness of thy clime : And whilst the light and luxury of thy skies Give brighter smiles to beauteous woman's eyes, The Arts, whose soul is love, shall all spontaneous rise.

The first fifty years of Australian settlement, closing with the administration of Sir Richard Bourke, was a period of sore trial, constant discouragement, and hardy perseverance, uot uuchequered by the repulsive ravages of abnormal crime. But during these unpropitious days there were not wanting high-spirited men who yearned for the morning which they fervently believed would soon break upon the land. Conspicuous among these early patriots were Edward Smith Hall, John Dunmore Lang, William Charles Wentworth, and William Bland. The Press fought its way to a new battlefield, where the flag of victory has waved in the breezes of Heaven ever since. Something of the feeling of the free citizen

nerved men tn walk abroad with the confident hope in their eyes of a better time. The adventurous bands of newcomers which flowed into the country about the close of the first half-century added much to the social vigor and bold bearing as well as to the industrial enterprise of the population. We continually meet with men filling stations of influence at the present day who arrived in the Colony from IS3B to 1840. From the close of Bourkc’s far-sighted rule until 1856 the newborn Hercules began to move with steadier step from Ids cradle, and to put forth day by day the strengtii of lustier limbs. In 1848 the people wore called upon for the first time in all the wide realms of Australasia to elect men to legislate for them. The Constitution was of stunted growth; the franchise was contracted to narrow bounds ; the power of the Crown was still overwhelming. But who does not recollect the fiery leap with which the newly-enfranchised electors rushed to the polls ? From the date of those first electoral contests the old magnates, who had ruled so long and with such an absorbing sense of their exclusive importance, began to stagger before the blows of an unchained giant. The elective element in the Legislature was weak in numbers—weak almost to powerlessness in votes; but the power of free speech wielded by Wentworth, Lang, Richard Windeyer, Nichols, and by Martin, then in his fresh young manhood, awakened the land from the sea to its furthest borders. Abuse after abuse was mercilessly exposed ; the rights of Britons were boldly demanded ; the system of bondage, which hitherto had relieved England of her malefactors and supplied the local would-be aristocrats with unpaid labor, was scornfully swept away. The debates in the old Legislature of the thirteen years of remonstrance and battle, from 1843 to 1850, were worthy of the great cause of Australian liberty, which was then being bravely and rapidly carried on to complete triumph. The thirty-two years of Parliamentary government, here and in the sister colonies, which have followed, must be left to tell their own magnificent story. In spite of the querulous criticisms sometimes heard, the result, in its measure of blessings to the people, is a noble vindication of the wisdom and beneficence of self-government. But this is not all. It is only the grand beginning. Much has been done amiss, though more has been righteously done. Human progress cannot look to the past ; the day star is ever shining on the forward path. What lies before us ? The poet’s dream of a perfect polity might be supposed to find its fulfilment in Australia. Separated by wide and peaceful seas from all other lands ; with varieties of soil and climate to produce all that man needs for his use and gratification from tillage or pasturage; with mineral wealth in incalculable profusion at our very doors; with no obstacles arising from musty charters or baleful monopolies to stop the way of pure and free legislation ; with no class privileges to deaden ov distort the functions of government—one might have thought the scheme of self-rule, constructed for a people so happily situated, would have been carefully freed from all the corroding excrescenses which encrust the governmental systems of the Old World, And shall it not be so in the early future '! The hour will surely strike, and will not the men be found ? When we think of the w r aves of fresh life which constantly flow from our public school, the joyous and radiant boyhood yearly bursting into the possession of man’s estate, and energy and stainless pride, and passion for the work of citizenship, how can we doubt but that from the promising ranks of our Australian youth the country will, when the time of need comes, receive its devoted and patriotic servants ? If the young electors of the next ten years produce a group of only six men of high governing power —the capacity for stately exposition of matters of principle, clear insight into the condition of public welfare, unfailing resource in moments of difficulty or danger —and if these are bound together by ties of political agreement as well as by ties of birth, they will give a new and a loftier character to Australian nationhood. In every advance the national sentiment will become more Australian and less of any other clime. This is the natural effect, which should inspire neither surprise nor regret. The idol of the ambitious Australian will be his own fair country. All his more fervent aspirations will be for her, all his higher efforts to glorify her destinies. And in this upward and forward mission the constituent bodies will be purified and the ballot-box regarded as a holy thing. The relations between the constituent and the representative will become purely political, and will bo sustained by feelings of truth and honor. Thus will the Parliament rise to its great place in the system of free institutions, performing its works of legislation in conscious dignity and mutual respect, and by the very atmosphere of its own life rendering the existence of a venial administration impossible. Let not this be deemed a picture merely of the imagination. It is easily possible to the young men born to an inheritance of liberty under the Southern Cross, which human stragglers in other parts of the world have no prospect of possessing. The Imperial connection is not inconsistent with this higher vitality and more elevated aim in Australian politics. But the union will have to fit itself to the widelyaltered conditions of the two countries. The present marriage garments are wearing out rapidly. The next generation will probably give us two successive kings on the British throne; the old statesmen who helped to make the Victorian reign illustrious will be all gone. The outlook iu the dear old land is misty enough. We in Australia shall be growing bigger and bigger, richer and richer, saucier and saucier. Will the new Imperial rulers try and keep pace with our strapping condition ? May the “meteor flag” of England wave over us and our children still; but come what may, let us never forget our heirdom to the national virtues—high daring, the sleepless enterprise, the prescient and pregnant patriotism, and the freeman’s love of justice ami truth—whicn t'-at glorious flag represents. MR HALLEY ()N IMPERIALISM.

I believe and have always believed that we possess no monopoly of the civilising influences of the world; that the great nations of Europe, differing from us only in language and certain institutions of government, have their own machinery for effecting civilisation in its highest forms. They may not in the main have any of those Parliamentary institutions of which we are so justly proud, and of which, I also may daringly say, we are compelled sometimes by the utter degradation of their procedure to be so heartily ashamed. I could never work myself up into a state of excitement about the occupation by some of the most cultivated and highly-educated nations of Europe of savage islands which we never thought of occupying ; which the great body of the taxpaying portions of the Empire would never permit us to occupy; which our people practically never could occupy, and for the cultivation of which we should be obliged to institute a species of slavery if we ever attempted to occupy them to any advantage. At a time when we knew the whole policy of the English nation was against the multiplication of colonies, particularly in unsuitable climates, and which could only be developed under conditions of which wedidnotapprove, we were publicly denouncing those European counties, over-burdened with population and distress, who were seeking to found settlements in the South Seas. To those great nations, who are our allies, who are sharing with us the labors and triumphs of civilisation, we were under the deepest obligations for the good and thriving and successful and cultivated immigrants whom we have rc ceived from them in our own colonies. And yet we were denouncing the right of those nations—undoubtedly a right equal to our oW n—to take possession of islands which we refuse to occupy. I believed then, and believe now, that the multiplication of these settlements in places of which we do not intend ourselves to take possession can only increase our own importance and our own trade in these Australian colonies, and tend ultimately to the pacification of the world. We have alreadj, as I have shown over and over again, a most remunerative trade with France in her colony of New Caledonia. We shall have the same with Germany in her settlements. No French or Gorman colonies in these seas can ever have any other relations to us than those of good customers. An idle suggestion is made that they may some day create in these waters

dangerous antagonisms and imperil the world’s peace, as if our national development can ever be in the slightest degree affected by the neighborhood of a few settlements which could never he great ones, and whose occupants would only be counted by hundreds, while our population on the continent will be counted by tens of millions. And yet we have been making “instant representations concerning the efforts of those foreign nations, embroiling our own Foreign Office in all kinds of difficulties and making dangerous disturbers of European peace of those Agenta-General who in some cases seem to pass most of the time, which should be devoted to practically commercial duties, in exalting themselves to ambassadorial functions, and running about to foreign secretaries and imperilling our relations with foreign nations. And this brings me to a question which, I think, enters largely into all this denunciation of foreign occupation of the Pacific, and that is the missionary question. I have nothing but a feeling of the profoundest reverence for those Christian ministers of any religious persuasion who, at the risk of their lives, carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the knowledge of these millions of savages in the South Seas ; hut I do not think that any modern European Power of civilisation will ever dare to interfere|with the labors of these holy men, so long as they are confined to the performance of their priestly duties. And I know that there are scattered all over the South Seas French Catholic missionaries whose culture, courage, poverty, and charity would adorn the confessorship of Christianity in any age or place. If these settlements, moreover, of foreign Powers are made, they will necessitate protection on the part of foreign Governments, and a portion of that armed force which those Governments are compelled to maintain will necessarily be withdrawn from their own countries to uphold their possessions in the Pacific. This will weaken their power in Europe, and, for our own parts, here we shall always have au enormously superior power for the protection of our own interests in these colonies. So that while we lessen the peril of the Empire at Home we do not increase our own here. These are the views to which I have given expression, which I hold as strongly as ever, and which I believe are shared in by the great majority of the people of this country who have no sympathy whatever, in my opinion, with a great deal of this pretended apprehension of peril from the creation of foreign settlements in the Pacific.

And this brings me to the measure which has been recently passed for identifying the colonies with the Imperial Government in our naval defence. The proposals embodied in that Act are substantially those which I embodied years ago, at the very time when the contingent was despatched from this country to Egypt, in a minute which 1 wrote. I had repeated interviews with the very distinguished sailor who at that time commanded the British Navy in these seas—one of the ablest and one of the most laborious men of his profession whose acquaintance I have ever had the honor and privilege of making—Sir George Tryon. He was really the author of this arrangement, and worked towards its completion with an ardor and devotion which both these colonies and the Imperial Government should gratefully recognise ; which recognition, I take the opportunity of saying, has not taken place. There is not the least originality on the part of the present Government in these proposals. They were all practically agreed upon years before they took office, I perceive a disposition to regard this measure as an effort on the part of the Imperial Government to purchase for the partial maintenance of their navy the pecuniary support of these Australian colonies. So far from regarding the Imperial Government as being under any obligation to us, I am one of those who look upon our obligations in connection with this arrangement as being very great to them. The protection whicli their ships, up to the pvesent exclusively paid for by the heavily burdened Britisli taxpayer, has extended is the protection of our coasts, of our property, of our commerce, and of our people. They have spent from the first millions in guarding the shoves of these Australian colonies, and we have not repaid them by a single penny. When they had a reasonable ground for apprehensions of European war, they still maintained their ships in our harbors and upon our shores. We had the prestige and the protection of the Empire without a share of its burdens. We are now acting like honest men in paying a very small portion of the debt which we owe the Imperial Government. , . .

1 have no purpose whatever to serve, but the advancement of this great country. I have already received at the hands of the Soveieign the highest distinction which she could bestow upon me, having declined through twenty years of life numbers of distinctions which | endeavored to avoid, as is known to thousands of persons in this country, with as much perseverance as others sought them. And the one bestowed upon me I shall probably never enjoy in its full development, for it is extremely doubtful in my broken state of health and from other circumstances that I shall ever revisit the Mother Country. I have nothing, therefore, to influence me in my views of our relations with England but my conviction of what is best for the interests of this country, and that conviction is that our development, our prosperity, and our security are best effected by the strictest alliance with the country from which we have received all the civilisation which we possess, and the only effectual protection which we can obtain from any quarter. In this opinion I am fortified by the opinion of the great body of the people of this country. lam as familiar with public opinion us most persons here. lam a native of the Colony. I have moved as much among all classes of the community as any man in it. I am as well known as any citizen, and I have teen from boyhood intimately identified with its best men. “ You have asked me whether I still look with pride and approval upon the admittedly unconstitutional course which I took in the despatch of the contingent to the Soudan, of which in more recent times, notwithstanding the popular enthusiasm excited at the time, much disapproval has been expressed. I have no hesitation in telling you that if the opportunity for a repetition of such action were presented to me again under the like circumstances, if I were in power, I should avail myself of it with a loyal eagerness to serve the best interest of this country. Apart from what was its effect throughout Europe and upon the opinion of the world concerning the theretofore unmanifested powers of the Empire, there is not a reasonable man in all the Australian colonies who will not confess his inability to estimate the enormous benefit which it conferred upon these colonies themselves in the eyes of Englishmen. There is not a single person who has visited England since that event who will not give you his assurance that the relations of persons from the highest to the humblest towards Australian colonies were changed to your advantage by that national action. You have been received with enthusiasm, all kinds of distinctions have been lavished upon you, a greater and profounder interest has been taken in your prosperity, and the greatest attention has been bestowed upon any representations which have been made by oven the least influential amongst you. In all parts of the world the action has been applauded in the most unqualified terms, save here where it originated, and where some few of those persons who seem to be inspired with an ambition to obscure the glory of an event which they could never have originated endeavored to darken the splendor of the greatest historical action of the colonies of England up to the present time.”