XI.
POLITICAL DIFFICULTIES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.
Ifthe British public is as ignorant of other things as it is about Australia, it must be quite as ignorant a public as Mr. Matthew Arnold would have us believe. It appears to be under an impression that Australians habitually carry revolvers. It has always persisted in believing that Botany Bay was the place to which convicts were sent out, and has a misty idea that that much libelled bay is the port of Sydney. A person at Hobart Town is requested by an English friend to invite to dinner occasionally a man who lives at Sydney. Even Lord Grey invariably spells Port Phillip with one L. And so on. But the most remarkable blunder I have seen was made by theSaturday Review. It had an article criticising the appointment of Lord Belmore to the office of ‘Governor-General of the Australian Colonies,’ in blissful ignorance that no such office exists, or has existed for some years past. The office referred to was that of Governor of New South Wales. But it was not only a mistake in a name. The writer laid so much stress on the paramount importance of the appointment and the power it conferred, that it is evidentthat he was under the impression that a Governor residing at Sydney possesses authority over the other Australian colonies. I need hardly say that this is no more true than it is true that the Queen possesses authority over the United States of America.
On the all-important land question, legislation has not been much better in New South Wales than in Victoria. Here, as there, the ‘Free Selectors’ by force of numbers can carry elections and bend everything in their favour. The vicious system of balloting for blocks of land has not been introduced; for the extent of the country and thinness of the population have made the number of applicants for land in any one district comparatively few. On the other hand, not merely certain surveyed areas, as in Victoria, but the whole country, with the exception of small reserves, is open to free selection at a fixed price at any time. More than that, if a Squatter wishes to purchase a piece of his own run, even if no one else has expressed any desire to purchase it, he must give the requisite public notice to the Government officer, and then any other person who does not possess land may step in and buy the piece at the regulation price in preference to him. Thus, a Selector, made aware by the Squatter’s notice of the portion of his run which he values most, may (and sometimes does) purchase it as a speculation, in the hope of annoying him into buying him off in a few years at an increased price. Every Squatter who leases a run from the Crown is liable to invasion byFree Selectors. An abatement of rent is indeed made in case of land being taken from him, but the compensation is quite inadequate to the loss and injury sustained. For the Selector has grazing rights over a certain area in addition to the fee-simple of his block of land, and as he is under no obligation to fence, there is nothing to prevent his stock from feeding all over the Squatter’s run. I was told that in some districts it has been found impossible to carry on cattle stations, and they have been abandoned or turned into sheep stations, owing to the Selectors. It was notorious that the latter, having in general little skill in agriculture, and being far from any market, could exist only by eating or selling the Squatters’ cattle. Indeed this was pretty well proved by their often disappearing altogether from the neighbourhood when the keeping of cattle was given up. With sheep it is not quite so bad. They are under the shepherd’s eye, and are sooner missed. And according to the bush code of morality, in some districts cattle are almostferæ naturæ, and taking them is not stealing in the same degree as taking a pocket handkerchief or even a sheep is.
A large proportion of the small settlers and Free Selectors in New South Wales are Irish. The English and Scotch in the Australian colonies amalgamate easily. They have no national or religious antipathies to overcome, and frequently even attend each other’s churches. The Irish remain apart. They generally are glad to get a government situation of any kind, and are said to make very good officials, and they contributethe great majority of domestic servants. One does not hear of many of them being in trade. The greater number seem to go up the country, as they are generally desirous of becoming possessors of land, often in larger quantities than they can turn to profitable account. This desire once accomplished, which is a very easy matter in New South Wales, their ambition seems to be too readily satisfied. There seems no reason why a small settler should not earn money enough to live in comfort and even luxury by occasionally combining labour for wages with the cultivation of his own land. But, for what reason I know not, it is seldom that anything like comfort is to be seen amongst this class up the country. A man will just run up a rude slab hut for himself and his family, often with room enough between the slabs to put a hand through. The roof is easily made with sheets of bark tied on. Sometimes there is not even a window, and only one hole in the roof for the light to come in and the smoke to go out at. The floor is the bare ground, good enough in dry weather, in wet weather very likely killing off a child or two with consumption or rheumatic fever. The bread they eat is sometimes so bad and so sour that it is impossible for anyone unused to it to digest it, though any good bushman can make a damper in the ashes as sweet and wholesome as possible. Their mutton is often half wasted, and the rest cooked to the consistency of leather. The bones are thrown away, for who ever heard of soup or broth in the bush? It is too much trouble to grow vegetables. I went to one‘accommodation-house’ (an inferior kind of inn), where there was a cow and plenty of milk, but it was too much trouble to drive her in to be milked, or even to tie up her calf so that she might not stray; and so all the children, two or three of whom were down with the measles, drank their bad tea, which is the staple beverage at all meals, and was especially needed here to disguise the abominable dirtiness of the water, without a drop of milk to it. Why are not children taught a little about kitchen economy and cooking at school? In the bush reading and writing are elegant and refined accomplishments, useful in their way, but mere ornamental accessories to a complete education compared with the knowledge how to make a loaf of bread and cook a bit of mutton.
De Tocqueville remarked on the depression and melancholy expressed on the countenance of the American backwoodsman and the harassed, prematurely aged look of the wife. Something of this is to be seen in the settler in the bush. You seldom see a smile or hear a laugh. It is not that there is any need to work harder than is good for health. Still less is there anything approaching to want. But the great loneliness is very trying to most minds. I have been told by a shepherd’s wife that she did not see anyone but her husband much oftener than once in three months, and he was generally away all day, and often all night. Possibly she may have exaggerated a little. But this was within four miles of a township and a main road. What must it be in remote districts, where stations aresometimes twenty miles and more apart? Shepherding is the most lonely occupation of any, and it is said that a large proportion of the inmates of colonial lunatic asylums have been shepherds. If you ask anyone not born in the colony if he or she would like to go home again, not one in twenty but will wistfully and unhesitatingly answer ‘Yes;’ though not one in twenty but is richer and has greater means of living in comfort now than before leaving home. Not but what it would be a mistake to make too much of this preference for the old home. Happy memories live while sad ones perish, and those whom you ask are old now, probably, and were young when they were at home, and what they really mean (though they don’t exactly know it) is that they liked being young better than they like being old.
The Irish here, as everywhere, multiply much faster than the rest of the population. It is said that at one time great efforts were made to swamp the rest of the population with Irish emigrants, and make New South Wales essentially a Roman Catholic colony. There is no chance of this happening now; but there is an element of disturbance and lawlessness in their separate and sectarian organization which in critical times might be dangerous, and is at all times injurious to political morality. Roman Catholicism among the Irish in Australia seems to be becoming less a Church than a political society. The priests are said not to be very strict about a man’s morality, or how often or how seldom he goes to mass or confesses. If he pays hissubscription to the priest or the new chapel when he is asked for it, and votes as he is told at the elections, he is a good Roman Catholic. It may almost be compared to the Vehmgericht, the Jacobin Society, the Evangelical Alliance, the Reform League, or the Trades’ Unions. For all these have, or pretend to have, a germ of religion orquasi-religion in them which gives them their strength and coherence; and all have set up an authority unrecognised by the law, and have exercised influence chiefly by open or disguised intimidation.
Their ecclesiastical organization gives the Roman Catholics more political power than naturally belongs to them. A Squatter told me that even the maid-servants in his house up the country were called upon to pay a certain subscription, being assessed sometimes even as high as ten shillings, and woe to them if they refused! This is what is commonly called the voluntary system, for the law does not enforce payment, and its advocates point to the result in triumph. At the elections, if for any reason it is required of them, they obey orders, and vote as one man. Any ‘private judgment’ in such a case would be a grievous offence. A candidate at a coming election for a town in New South Wales was once asked for a subscription to a Roman Catholic charity. He promised a liberal donation, on condition that the money should not be used for proselytizing purposes. This, however, the applicant for the subscription refused to promise—in fact it was admitted that the money would be so employed—and so the candidate declined to give it. This was at Sydney.A few days later he went to the town where the election was to be, at some distance up the country. He was unquestionably the popular candidate, and justly so, for he had been a benefactor to the neighbourhood. To his surprise one or two of his supporters came to express their regret that they could not vote for him, but assigned no reason. The election took place, and he was left behind in a small minority. The electors had obeyed ecclesiastical orders at the poll. They had not been, in the electioneering sense of the word, intimidated—had they not had the protection of the ballot, that infallible nostrum against intimidation?—and they had voted in accordance with their religious or ecclesiastical conscience, though against their individual inclination or judgment. Now they were free to express their own sympathies, which they did by seating the favourite but defeated candidate in a carriage by the side of the successful one, and making him share in the triumphal progress round the town.
This sort of influence is in its origin, if not in its essence, religious, and therefore out of reach of state interference. But its effect is political, and by producing a compact and powerfulimperium in imperio, might become subversive of good government to a very serious extent, under a constitution in which a numerical majority, however composed, is all-powerful. If a third of the population, or thereabouts, choose to abdicate their individual wills and delegate their united strength to nobody knows who, bishop or conclave or priest, it may produce very serious political results.
People talk glibly enough about separation of Church and State as if it were a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence, a very simple connection capable of being made or dissolved in a moment by a vote or an Act of Parliament. But it sometimes happens that a man’s Church allegiance and his State allegiance are much too intricately interwoven for any Act of any Parliament to separate. Where a man’s religious creed (if he have any) centres, there generally will his political heart be also. The old Whig notion of a population holding all possible different beliefs and disbeliefs and yet remaining none the less cordially loyal to the State, may be a wholesome ideal for a statesman to have in his mind, but is impossible—even if desirable—to be really attained. The ex-Queen of Spain a short time ago sent a very handsome present of church-plate to the Roman Catholic Cathedral at Sydney. There was a great festival of the Roman Catholics on occasion of its being consecrated or placed in the Cathedral. It would have been interesting, if it had been possible, to analyse thisrapprochementbetween Roman Catholic Spain and Roman Catholic Australia, and to discover how much was political and how much religious in it. Probably many an Irishman, if he had been asked, would have honestly answered that he believed the Queen of Spain to be the best and noblest of Sovereigns, and her government the most just, liberal, and enlightened in Europe; and if an occasion offered would vote or act in accordance with that idea, as witha similar idea the Irish joined the Papal army to fight the King of Italy some years ago.
Fortunately, Australia is a long way from Rome, and it may be hoped that the ultramontane element in Romanism may give place gradually to a purer and more enlightened, if less strictly consistent and logical, secular patriotism. I believe there are some slight indications of this, here and there, already.Cælum non animum mutant qui trans mare curruntis a maxim which does not apply so closely when the voyage is a very long one. But it may perhaps take a generation or two before any great change takes place, and in the meantime the element of divided allegiance is a dangerous one in the hands of the fanatical or the unscrupulously ambitious.
A few months ago the Roman Catholic chaplain of one of the Sydney convict establishments was found to be systematically inculcating Fenianism on his flock of gaol birds. He was dismissed. But from the outcry made in the House of Assembly and elsewhere about certain formalities or informalities in the manner of his dismissal, it was evident that the sympathies of many were with him. This is the more significant, from the fact that the priests in Ireland have, ostensibly at least, opposed the Fenian movement.
Not twenty years ago an Irishman who for a seditious libel had become acquainted with the inside of a gaol, and through a technical legal mistake had narrowly escaped a second conviction, emigrated to Melbourne. His reputation had preceded him, and hewas received on landing with an ovation and a very handsome present of several thousand pounds. In responding he showed his sense of the course of conduct which had procured him this popularity, and announced with emphasis that he always had been and always should be arebel to the backbone. Within a few years he was a member of the Ministry, and holding one of the most important offices in it. Being now comparatively wealthy and enjoying a very large pension for not very arduous services, he has become rather conservative than otherwise—does not altogether go with the present Government in the matter of the Lady Darling vote, for instance—and would fain have it forgotten, it is said, that he is pledged for life to ceaseless rebellion.