XXIV. POSSIBLE ENTRANCE OF NEW STATES.

The existing situation may be so materially affected by the entrance of new States that one naturally asks what are the prospects that new States will be admitted. As the whole Continent is already divided among the five existing States, new ones can come into being only by carving up the three larger of these. There has already been talk of dividing Queensland into two or perhaps three States. Others might be formed out of the now sparsely peopled regions of the north and north-west, when they have become more thickly inhabited. How fast the process of colonization will advance in these regions will depend upon what engineering science may be found able to do for the more arid tracts in the way of storing rain-water and raising it from deep wells, while something will depend on the disposition of the Federal Government to spend money for that purpose. Nor is another element to be overlooked. Vast as is the mineral wealth already known to exist in the explored parts of Australia, it may be equalled by that which exists in regions which have received no thorough geological examination. Should mines begin to be worked in the arid tracts, an additional motive would be given for the provision of water supplies there, for the existence of a population furnishing markets would stimulate men to develop the capacities of the soil for ranching and even for tillage. These possibilities show how many factors hitherto undetermined may go to moulding the political future of the country. The increase of population in regions now

thinly peopled would either make the four smaller States, or some of them, the equals of the larger, or would, more probably, lead to the creation of new States, some of them with a character different from that of the two which now command a decisive majority in the House of Representatives. As the settlement of the Mississippi Valley changed American politics, so a filling up of large parts of the interior and north of Australia, unlikely as this now appears, might affect her constitutional growth in ways at which we can now only guess.

At present not only these tropical regions, but also the settled parts of Western Australia are separated by vast uninhabited spaces from the populous south-east corner of the continent. Hence just as in Canada an Intercolonial Railway to connect Nova Scotia and New Brunswick with Quebec and Ontario was provided for in the Constitution of 1867, and just as the construction of the great transcontinental Canadian Pacific line enabled Manitoba and British Columbia to become effective members of the Federation, so a line of railway from east to west across Australia, as well as the completion of the line, already partly constructed, from the south to the north, are among the political needs of the Commonwealth, and might do much to weld its people into an even more united nation.

One community remains to be mentioned whose geographical position towards Australia recalls the saying of Grattan that while the Ocean forbade Ireland to be politically severed from Britain, the Sea forbade an incorporating union. It has been hoped that New Zealand would enter the Federation, and she has herself

seriously considered whether she ought to do so. With a healthy climate, a soil generally well watered, and an area not much less than that of the British Isles, New Zealand has evidently a great future before her. The population, now between 700,000 and 800,000, has tripled within the last thirty years; and the level of personal comfort and well-being is as high as anywhere in the world. Her accession would give further strength to the Federal Commonwealth. But New Zealand, as one of her statesmen observed, has twelve hundred reasons against union with Australia, for she is separated from the nearest part of Australia by twelve hundred miles of stormy sea, a distance more than half of that which divides Ireland from Newfoundland. She may therefore think that some sort of permanent league with Australia, for the purposes of combined naval defence and joint action in external questions of common concern, would conform better to her outlying position than would participation in a Legislature which must be mainly occupied with the affairs of Australia. Of the subjects assigned by the Constitution to the Commonwealth Parliament, there are several in which, because purely Australian, New Zealand would have no interest, some also with regard to which she could legislate better for herself than the Commonwealth could legislate for her, inasmuch as her economic and social conditions are not the same as those of Australia. An illustration is furnished by the difference between the native races in the two countries. The Australian aborigines, one of the most backward branches of the human family, are obviously unfit for the exercise of any political functions. They are not permitted to vote Nn3

BRYCE I

in any colony, and the Constitution provides that in determining the number of representatives to be allotted to a State they shall not be reckoned among its population. But the Maoris of New Zealand are an intelligent folk, to whom New Zealand has given the suffrage, and who are now on excellent terms with their white neighbours. It would no doubt be possible for the Commonwealth Parliament to legislate differently for them and for the 'black fellows' of Australia; but their dissimilar character shows the difference of the problems which arise in the two countries. New Zealand has however an interest in obtaining free access to the Australian markets, and her final decision as to entering the Federation may be influenced by the commercial policy which the larger country pursues1.

In this changeful world, no form of government ever remains the same during a long series of years, and no Federation, however strictly the rights of its members may be secured by a Rigid Constitution, can continue to maintain exactly the same balance of powers between the Nation and the States. I have already expressed the opinion that the tendency is in Australia likely to be rather towards consolidation than towards a relaxation of the Federal bond, because not only national sentiment but economic influences also will work in that direction. Much however may depend on a factor still unpredictable, the relations between Australia, together with the British Empire generally, and the other Powers which are interested in the Western Pacific. Nothing

1 While these pages were passing through the press, a Commission appointed in New Zealand to consider the question has reported strongly against her entrance into the Australian Federation.

does so much to draw together a people already homogeneous as the emergence of issues which threaten, or result in, a struggle against foreign States. The sentiment of internal unity is accentuated. Public attention is diverted from domestic controversies. Powers are willingly yielded to the Executive which would in days of peace be refused. The consequences may be good or evil-they have sometimes been in the long run evil-but either way they alter the character of the government. They may even give a new direction to its policy, as the United States has recently, and quite unexpectedly, discovered.

XXV. FUTURE RELATIONS OF THE AUSTRALIAN

COMMONWEALTH TO BRITAIN.

Australia however is not a State standing alone, in the world, but a member of the British Empire, so we cannot close an examination of her Constitution without asking whether the union of her Colonies will affect her relations to the mother country.

When the first Convention to frame a Federal Constitution assembled in 1891, most Englishmen supposed that a Federated Australia would soon aspire to complete independence. Australian statesmen saw deeper, and predicted that the formation from the several Colonies of an Australian Nation would tend not to loosen, but rather to draw closer the ties that unite the people to Great Britain. So far as can be judged from the course of Australian opinion during the past ten years, this has been the result. There were at first. some who advocated Federation as a means to independence. But they soon desisted, overborne by a different