34

AUSTRALIA HIST.

PART I.

gradually arrived at the practical expression of such an ideal. It is rather that of a people which at first had very little conception of the advantages of union; which was divided by the extreme of parochial sentiment; and which was not only not prepared to make any sacrifices for the cause of union, but did not even see that there was any sufficient justification for the making of sacrifices. It was only under pressure of the tangible disadvantages of disunion that the practical desirability of union came slowly to be recognised, and gave birth in its turn to a national desire for union as an abstract ideal. In the telling of the story of the union of Australia, therefore, there is little to be said of disinterested enthusiasm or the great aims of farseeing statesmanship. It is true that these did play their part, and that their part was not a small one, in the final achievement. But far more prominent and far more effective was the part played by hard business considerations. It was the pressure of jarring interests that compelled a compromise between Colonies whose individual prosperity was threatened by the rivalry of their neighbours. Business and not sentiment was the cradle of the Australian Commonwealth. There could be no better illustration of this than the tariff question. It was, in fact, on this very question that the first suggestions of union between the Colonies was made. And throughout the negotiations upon the question of tariffs there is one uniform factor-the position of New South Wales. The matter divides itself naturally into two parts: first, the question of the Murray River, and, secondly, the imposition of a uniform tariff for all the Australian Colonies. The Murray River question is of little importance in the history of the Australian Commonwealth except as illustrating the difficulties which had to be met and the essentially parochial attitude of the three Colonies which were vitally concerned. In so far as traffic across the river between New South Wales and Victoria was concerned, the question of the Murray River was really only a part of the larger question of a uniform tariff. But there was also the fact that the river itself was navigable, and this drew South Australia into the negotiations. It was, therefore, necessary to arrive at some agreement for the disposal between the three Colonies of the proceeds of duties collected on goods carried on the river; and in 1855 an agreement was made and adopted by the Legislature of each of the three Colonies, that there should be no duty on goods crossing the Murray, and that on goods carried up the Murray from South Australia duty should be levied by South Australia according to the South Australian tariff, and should be divided equally between New South Wales and Victoria. This agreement-modified in 1857 by the substitution of the New South Wales for the South Australian tariff as the basis for the collection of duty-lasted till 1864, when it was denounced by New South Wales. It was succeeded by another agreement in 1865 providing for the freedom from duty of goods crossing the Murray upon the condition of payment of a fixed sum per annum by Victoria to New South Wales, whilst the duties on goods carried up the river were to be collected

by South Australia according to the Victorian tariff. This agreement expired automatically in 1872; and though a new agreement was entered into after a Conference in 1873, Victoria retired from it immediately, and all further attempts to arrive at a permanent agreement failed.

A uniform tariff, though it was never agreed upon by the Colonies, was recognised as a thing to be aimed at from the earliest days of the separation of the various Colonies from the Mother Colony of New South Wales. The subject is complicated, not only by the multiplicity of Conferences held and proposals made upon it, but also by the fact that the Imperial Government insisted on its right to control the tariffs made by separate Colonies in such a way as to forbid any differentiation in those tariffs in favour of or against any particular Colony or State. An assertion of this right was made in the Australian Colonies' Government Bill of 1850, and was perpetuated by special provisions in the Constitution granted to each Colony between 1850 and 1860. But it had been enforced earlier. Thus when in 1842 the Legislative Council of New South Wales passed an Act to admit goods the produce or manufacture of Van Dieman's Land [as Tasmania was then called] and New Zealand free of duty, Lord Stanley, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, thought the occasion of sufficient importance to justify a circular to the Governors of all the Colonies, pointing out that a policy of discrimination would involve the foreign relations and commercial treaties of Great Britain. Subsequently the Act passed by the Legislative Council of New South Wales was disallowed. The result was to discourage mutual tariff arrangements between the Australian Colonies, and to compel each Colony to go its own way. Thus, whereas Victoria became strongly Protectionist in theory and practice, and was followed by the less important Colonies, New South Wales tended equally decisively towards the theory and practice of Free Trade, and a barrier was raised across the path of the Federal movement which was the chief obstacle to union. It would serve no purpose here to trace in detail the efforts made to overcome the tariff difficulty and to settle upon a uniform tariff. The point is that the burden of inter-Colonial duties furnished one of the main stimulants towards union, whilst the almost insuperable difficulty of assimilating duties based upon the peculiar needs of each Colony and fortified by all the armaments of rival schools of economic thought, delayed and minimised the action of that stimulant. The tariff question as a motive for union carried in itself the corrective of its own energising influence Although-in so far as it was the vital question at many Conferences, which, though abortive as far as their main object was concerned, did much to familiarise the leading men of each Colony with the problem of union-the tariff question cannot be considered merely as an obstacle to Federation.

And though it seemed hopeless to devise a settlement of the The Federal tariff question, there were other questions in considering which Council. the disadvantages of disunion were again and again forced upon the leading men of each Colony. It was not, however, till 1883

that any one of these questions became so urgent as to demand immediate settlement, and immediate settlement, not for any individual Colony only, but for the whole of Australia. When that demand did arise, it arose on a question which no Australian would have believed to be urgent until its urgency was actually forced on his attention by the logic of events. If there had been one element lacking in Australia which in other countries had been the element outweighing all others in the case for Union, it had been the element of defence. In America, in Switzerland, in Germany, in Canada, unity of the people for purposes of defence had been one of the primary objects of casting that unity in the iron mould of a written Constitution. But the Australian had always flattered himself that he was under no such necessity. In 1883 he received a salutary lesson upon the folly of isolated security. France and Germany began to threaten intervention in the Pacific; the former coveted the New Hebrides, the latter was believed to have designs on New Guinea. In the case of New Guinea, the Queensland Government took the obvious course of forestalling German intervention by occupation in the name of the Queen, and found itself abandoned by the Imperial Government, which disavowed its action. It was, in short, clear that there was no security against European intervention for Australia unless she was prepared to defend herself. Under these circumstances, men began to remember a proposal which had been made by Sir Henry Parkes, Prime Minister of New South Wales, at a Conference on the tariff question held in 1880-1881. After the inevitable disagreement on the tariff question had come to a head, the Conference passed a resolution, on the motion of Sir H. Parkes, expressing its opinion that the time had come for the creation of a Federal Council to deal with inter-Colonial matters. At the request of the Conference, the New South Wales Government prepared a Bill to provide for the establishment of such a Fdereal Council, accompanied by a memorandum written by Parkes himself in which it was explained that in his opinion the time had not come for the establishment of a Federal Constitution with a Federal Parliament, but that the time had come " when a number of matters of much concern to all the Colonies might be dealt with more effectually by some Federal authority than by all the Colonies separately." The memorandum added "that an organisation which would lead men to think in the direction of Federation and accustom the public mind to Federal ideas, would be the best preparation for the foundation of Federal Government." Sir H. Parkes, had, in short, come to the conclusion that it was no use at that time to expend more energy upon futile struggles for a uniform tariff, but that there were other matters upon which unity might be obtained without the bitterness and clash of interests that always marked the discussion of the tariff question. Thus placed before the Conference at Sydney in 1881, the proposal for a Federal Council did not meet with anything like unanimous approval. The question was raised as to where revenue was to be obtained for such a Council, and upon this rock the Conference

split into two equal halves-New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania voting for the Bill; Victoria, Queensland and New Zealand against; whilst West Australia did not vote at all. As far as the Conference of 1880-1881 went, therefore, the Federal Council Bill had dropped. But in 1883 the proposal was revived. In November of that year a Convention was held at Sydney at which the seven Colonies and Fiji were represented. The first question before the Convention was the annexation of, or the establishment of a Protectorate over East New Guinea and the West Pacific Islands from the Equator to the New Hebrides in order to prevent their falling into the hands of foreign powers. The Convention then adopted a resolution in favour of a Federal Council. A Committee was appointed to draft a Bill for the purpose. As adopted by the Convention, the Bill provided for the creation of a Federal Council, to come into operation only when approved by at least four Colonies and to affect only those Colonies which had passed the Bill. Each self-governing Colony was to be represented on the Council by two members, Crown Colonies having one member each. The province of the Council was purely legislative. It had no executive powers and no control over revenue or expenditure. On seven specified matters it had original jurisdiction. They were: The relations of Australasia with the islands Powers of the of the Pacific; Prevention of the influx of criminals; fisheries in Federal Council. Australian waters outside territorial limits; service of civil process; enforcement of judgments and of criminal process outside the limits of each Colony; extradition of offenders; custody of offenders on board Government ships outside territorial limits. On certain other matters-[defence, quarantine, patent and copyright, bills of exchange and promissory notes, weights and measures, recognition of marriage and divorce, naturalisation, status of corporations, and "any other matter of general Australasian interest with respect to which the Legislatures of the several Colonies can legislate within their own limits, and as to which it is deemed desirable that there should be a law of general application"]the Federal Council might legislate when requested to do so by the Legislatures of two or more Colonies, such legislation only to affect the Colonies which had asked for it. It was also agreed by the delegates present at the Convention that the Bill as passed should be submitted to the separate Legislatures, which should be asked to pass addresses to the Crown praying for legislation on the lines laid down by the Bill. This was done by the Governments of Victoria, Tasmania, Queensland, South and Western Australia and Fiji, whose Legislatures approved of the Bill. But in New South Wales the Government pleaded the pressure of more important business as an excuse for not submitting the Bill to Parliament. At last the Bill was submitted, and defeated in the Lower House by one vote. In spite, however, of the defection of New South Wales and New Zealand, the Bill passed the Imperial Parliament as the Federal Council of Australasia Act, 1885." "The Federal In addition to the provisions of the Bill adopted by the Convention, Council of this Act gave any Colony power to withdraw from the Council, Australasia

Act," 1885.

The Conference of 1890.

and allowed the Queen, at the request of the Colonies, to increase the number of members. The Act was adopted by Victoria, Western Australia, Queensland, Tasmania and Fiji in 1885; and the first meeting of the Council was held in 1886. South Australia adopted the Act for two years in 1888. But the Council did nothing of any importance and after it had languished for some years, its last meeting was held in 1899. The Federal Council Act was finally repealed by the Commonwealth Constitution.

The Federal Council was in fact still-born, owing mainly to the refusal of New South Wales to have any part in its composition or working. Yet the proposal for such a Council had come from New South Wales through the initiative of her great Prime Minister, Sir Henry Parkes; and, as the next decisive step in the progress of the idea of Australian unity was taken also on his initiative, it is necessary to account briefly for his opposition to the Federal Council as finally constituted. That opposition seems to have been due to two main causes. First, the fact that during the deliberations of the Convention which finally shaped the Federal Council Bill a fierce opposition to the proposal for a Federal Council broke out in Sydney. This opposition was based primarily on the fact that the Convention did not take the public into its confidence. As Messrs. Quick and Garran ("Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth," p. 112) say in their admirable summary of the progress of the Federal movement in Australia :

"The Convention had sat with closed doors; and it seems that at one time, in its zeal for prompt action, it had contemplated asking the Home Government to pass the Bill at once, without reference to the Legislatures. Even the agreement arrived at only gave the Legislatures the option of accepting or rejecting the scheme as it stood, and gave them no voice in deciding its details. There was a strong feeling in Sydney against making so important a Constitutional change with so little consideration; and the Bill itself was objected to because the Council, to which power was given to override the local Legislatures, was merely a small, peripatetic, and more or less irresponsible body of delegates. Objection was made, in fact, to handing over powers of Federal legislation to any less important and less representative a body than a real Federal Parliament.”

And, secondly, Sir Henry Parkes had an objection to the Federal Council founded on his own view of the practicability of Federation. When he initiated the proposal for a Federal Council in 1881, he was of opinion that it was only possible to deal through a central authority with matters which were non-contentious, so that the disadvantages of disunion pointed, without any serious obstacle intervening, to the advisability of union on such matters. By 1883, however, he had come to the conclusion that it was possible to go further. The discussions on the Federal Council had aroused public interest in Federation. That had been his object in proposing such a Council; and that object having been attained, the proposal might be allowed to drop. To carry it into effect would only be to create an inefficient central body which would, by its very inefficiency, impede the growth of a real national unity. Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of this entire change of views by Sir Henry Parkes on the question of the Federal Council, there can be no doubt whatever of the sincerity of