AUSTRALIA'S DANGER.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 116, 14 May 1909, Page 4

AUSTRALIA'S DANGER.

Another phase of the Asiatic menace to Australia, and incidentally to New Zealand, is dealt with in a recent issue of the Sydney Telegraph. It appears that Mr Holze, the assis-tant-returning officer for the Northern Territory, has recently contended that a person born in the Northern Territory of Chinese parents is in law a ratural-born British subject, and, ■■ therefore, entitled on attaining the age of 21 years, to be registered as a voter for Federal elections, provided that he has not incurred disqualification for any of the specific reasons provided in the Constitution. The journal from which, we quote considers that Mr Holze is justified in his contention. Section 41 of the Constitution Act provides that "no adult person who has or acquires a right to vote at elections for the more numerous House of the- Parliament of a State shall while the right continues be prevented by any law of the Commonwealth from voting at elections for either House of the Parliament of the Commonwealth." In South Australia all British subjects of the age of 21 years, inhabitants of South Australia, who have been registered upon any Assembly roll for six months, may vote for members of the Assembly, < , In .the Northern Territory immigrants under the Indian Immigration Act, 1882, and all persons except natural-born British subjects and Europeans or Americans naturalised as British subjects are disqiialified. It follows, therefore,

that though the naturalised Chinese in the Northern Territory is specially disqualified from voting at any elections, that disqualification cannot apply to his son born on the soil of the 'Northern Territory, which is a part of South Australia, and a part of the British dominions. The rule of the common law is that every person ■ born out of the British dominions is an alien, and that every person born within the British dominions is a British subject, the only exception to tli£ latter part of that proposition being the cases in which a person is born of alien parents on a portion of British territory temporarily in occupation of an enemy. At common law, therefore, a person born_ of Chinese parents in Australia is a natural-born British subject, just as a person born of European parents in Australia is also a natural-born British subject. Australian-born Chinese being entitled to the vote, it is clear that any considerable immigration of prolific Chinese parents might in one or two generations _ result in a population of Australianborn Chinese sufficiently numerous to swamp the white voters. All the more reason, therefore, adds the Telegraph, to maintain the policy of white Australia with the utmost possible_ vigilance. And, moreover, even if ths right of common law did not already exist it would have been necessary to invent it, because it is unthinkable' that in any civilised community it should be possible for persons to be born into a servile condition differentiating them from the mass of the [ population.