legislature and colour the public life of the nation as in America and England. But Government of the English 'Cabinet type' is essentially party Government, that is to say, it has been so hitherto both in England and wherever else it has been tried, and no one has yet shown how it can be made to work otherwise. In America the great parties are younger than the Constitution, which may be said to have created them. In England they are older than Cabinet Government proper, being practically contemporaneous in their rise with that very rudimentary form of the Cabinet which began to emerge in the time of King Charles II. In Australia every colony has had such active and skilfullyorganized parties that no one doubts but what the Federal Legislature will find its first Ministry forthwith provided with a competent Opposition. It is generally believed that the tariff will furnish the first, and for some time the main, ground of party division, for the new Government must begin by providing itself with an adequate revenue; the chief part of that revenue must be raised by indirect taxation, and the issue of Free Trade versus Protection has for years past been a burning one in the largest Colonies. I have observed that the Australian scheme contemplates a party system to work it. But what sort of a party system? Obviously one in which there are two parties only, each cohesive, each prepared to replace its antagonist in the Executive. Such was the party system of England till the present generation. Such has been the party system of the United States. Exceptions indeed there have been, such as the Know-Nothing party in 1852, the Greenback party in 1876, the Populist party which arose in 1889, and is not quite extinct now (February 1901). In the United States the power of the two great organizations is so vast, and the cost of creating a new party so deterrent, that a third organization seldom appears, and if it appears, presently disappears. But in France there have been and are several parliamentary groups, which frequently change their attitude towards one another, sometimes combining to support a Ministry, sometimes falling asunder and leaving it to perish, because one group alone was not sufficient to sustain it. Hence the lives of Cabinets have been short, and would have been still shorter but for the fact that an imminent peril to republican government itself has sometimes compelled the various republican groups to hold together. In Britain the same difficulty became acute from 1880 onwards, as the Irish Nationalists consolidated themselves in a distinct Third Party; and it may at any moment create serious embarrassment. It exists in Germany also, and in the Reichsrath of the Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Now in several of the Australian Colonial Parliaments a Labour party has recently arisen, which, keeping itself independent of the two older parties, can throw its weight on one or the other side and endanger the stability of Cabinets. Should this phenomenon reappear in the Parliament of the Commonwealth, it will complicate still further a position which the co-ordinate powers of Senate and House make complicated enough already1. 1 Since these lines were written, the phenomenon has reappeared, for at the first elections, held in the spring of 1901, of the Senate and House, the Labour party obtained more than one-fifth of the seats in each House. XXIII. POLITICAL ISSUES LIKELY TO ARISE The mention of parties suggests another question, the last I shall attempt to discuss, viz. the lines on which the political life of Australia is likely to move under her new Constitution. It is a topic on which little will be said by any one who remembers how seldom great constitutional changes have been followed by the results prophesied at the time. The Reform Bill of 1832 in Britain, the Civil War in the United States, the union of Italy under the dynasty of Savoy, not to speak of the French Revolutions of 1789 and 1848, all brought forth fruits very different from those predicted by some of the most judicious and unbiassed contemporary observers. Even the extension of the suffrage and redistribution of seats effected in Britain in 1884-5 were followed by a shifting of the balance of party strength exactly the opposite of that which the shrewdest party politicians had expected. But without attempting forecasts, one may try to indicate certain conditions likely to affect the development of Australian national and political life under the new form which this Constitution gives it. First let us ask what are the controversies likely to occupy the nation and to supply a basis for national parties? Taking one country with another, it will be found that the questions on which men have grouped themselves into parties may be classed under five heads, viz.: I. Questions of Race, such as those which have contributed to distract Ireland, which to-day trouble the Austrian Monarchy and (as respects the Poles) the Prussian Monarchy, which exist, though at present not acute, in Canada, and which are painfully acute in South Africa. 2. Questions of religion, now generally less formidable than they once were, yet embittering disputes regarding education in many modern countries. 3. Questions relating to foreign policy, whether as to the general lines on which it should be conducted, or as to the attitude to be held towards particular States at any given moment. 4. Questions regarding the distribution of political power within the nation itself. 5. Questions of an economic or economico-social kind, e.g. regarding the disposal of land in public hands or its tenure in private hands, regarding the conditions of labour, regarding taxation and finance, the policy of Protection or Free Trade, the policy of progressive imposts, the propriety of assisting particular industries or particular classes out of public funds, whether national or local. Some of these may seem to be rather social than economic, but it will be found upon scrutiny that it is their economic aspect, i. e. their tendency to take money from or give money to some class in the community, that makes them bases for party combination. A purely social question seldom assumes great political significance. (1, 2) Applying this classification to Australia we shall find that the first two sets of questions are absent. All the people are of practically the same race. None are animated by any religious passion, although contro versies have sometimes arisen over theological teaching in State schools. (3) Questions of foreign policy do not, strictly speaking, come within the scope of the Commonwealth Parliament, because they belong to the mother country. Nevertheless, it cannot be doubted that the Parliament will from time to time interest itself in them, especially as regards the isles of the Pacific and of the Eastern Archipelago, and will give forcible expression to its views should any crisis arrive. One can well imagine that the question of the attitude which the Commonwealth should assume, or urge the mother country to assume, towards Germany or France, or Holland, or even towards China or Japan or the United States, when any of these Powers may be taking action in the Western Pacific, might give rise to political contention. (4) As respects the distribution of political power and the structure of the Federal Government, Australia is so democratic already that it cannot go much further. It will doubtless, however, be proposed to extend to women in all the States that right of voting at Commonwealth elections which they already enjoy in South Australia and Western Australia, under the local law, or to apply more widely the institution of the direct popular vote; or to amend the Constitution in some point which will raise an issue between the more radical and the more conservative sections of opinion. That questions of constitutional amendment have played so small a part in American politics may be attributed to the extreme difficulty of securing the majorities required for altering the Constitution. In Australia the process will be far easier. The history of the United |