Brit

and other virtues, as well as of a cer-ish traditions, British aspirations, tain crude but valuable brutality. It ish habits of thought, and evolve carries with it, for example, the cer- substitutes of their own more in hartainty of physical discomfort, perhaps mony with their environment. Thus death unless care be taken to provide the gulf between them and the Old plenty of fuel and warm clothing-a Country will widen more and more, very profound and pregnant circum- until the two become perfectly alien to stance, if one takes the trouble to think each other in character and feeling. it out. It is rather remarkable, if we There is nothing to deplore herein. It consider it, that though the Teuton has would be as reasonable to lament that had hold of a good deal of southern the deciduous willows imported from Europe, and even of North Africa, in England are practically evergreen in his time, he has left little, if any, per- the north of the colony. We should manent mark thereon. We accept as not forget that difference does not sufficient reason for this the statement necessarily mean inferiority in national that the conquering Germans became character any more than in religion; lazy, indolent, and enervated in the Sunny South, and succumbed to the very failings that had rendered the nations which they vanquished so easy a prey to them. In other words, their national character was, if not corrupted, at any rate changed; and though, doubtless, other influences conspired to work this transformation, yet the climate always lay behind to admit these, to encourage them, and to strengthen them.

French and English, heterodox and orthodox, being after all mere variations on the theme of You and I. The one test of a nation's superiority, moral and physical, is war; and that test New Zealand, from her exceptional advantages of position, ought to be spared for some time yet.

We have now touched briefly on samples of the two extremes to be found in our empire: the country wherein the climate works against the white man Now, I am far from urging that the and for his colored rival; and that New Zealander is corrupted by his wherein it gives him an equal chance, climate; but I do say that he is changed if not superior advantages against colby it quite probably for the better, ored competition. There remains a but it may be for the worse. And with third class that wherein the colored each succeeding generation the national races have a sure advantage over a part character in New Zealand will diverge of the territory, and the whites a prefurther from its English prototype. sumably good chance over the remainAlready the dominant characteristic in der. Such a country is Australia. The New Zealand is a certain joyous frivol- continent, though it runs down to the ity, a cheerful assurance that everything 40th degree of latitude, runs up also must either be all right or come right of to the 10th; and though at a high itself sooner or later, and that mean- estimate perhaps two-thirds of it lie while nothing really matters very much. without the tropic, yet the country is There is no hard winter to bring home essentially a hot country. It is the to people the consequences of extrava-summer, not as in England the winter, gance, recklessness, and neglect of which is the season most fatal to work as in England; and therefore the (white) human life; and this is a penalty paid for them is much lighter. highly significant fact. Her people will be as, indeed, they already to a great extent are - cheerful, warm-hearted, pleasure-loving, and optimistic; exempt from the English melancholy, and probably, also, lacking the English restlessness, earnestness, and, in the north, perhaps, energy. They will wean themselves from Brit

The height to which the thermometer can rise in the Australian summer is proverbial; and were it not that the heat is dry there would be small chance for the English race at all. As it is, the transplanted English claim that they can work out of doors even in the northern districts, that is, those nearest to the equator,

east coast from Sydney northward is, however, a very comprehensive term, embracing, in fact, two-thirds of the eastern coastline with the city of Brisbane and the minor Queensland ports, such as Cooktown and Townsville, and it brings us on to a debatable land, and a very large question.

pect of severe work and hardship; still the heat of Australia is not all dry heat; more to encounter it with the chance of the rainfall is heavy enough, roughly loss, possibly of ruin. Men, of course, speaking, on the east coast, and grows do face it, and such men are the back-less and less as the centre of the contibone of Australia; but if we are to nent is approached. Where the heat is believe an eloquent writer, they face it damp its physical effect on the transwith a stoical pessimism and little hope. planted Anglo-Saxon is far more marked Coming down into the towns, towards than in other parts of Australia. Inwhich in three of the provinces all rail- deed, a critic, very friendly to Australia ways converge, there is no hard winter, generally, remarks that on the east that eminently Teutonic stimulus, to coast, from Sydney northward, the demake a man work "to keep himself bilitating effect of the climate may be warm." And, indeed, the combined seen, and that it is perhaps sufficient in action of a "lovely climate " and a glo- Sydney to destroy great activity in rious constitution has brought things to work. Certainly the people of Sydney such a pass that the Melbourne "unem- wear in summer a limp, parboiled apployed" refuse work in the country pearance painfully resembling that of even at a wage of 7s. a day. I cannot the degenerate whites in Barbados; but but think myself that the Australian | whether the resemblance is more than climate, by disinclining men to hard skin-deep is another question. The work, has very greatly favored the system, or rather theory, of administration which has brought the four eastern provinces almost to bankruptcy. The legal enforcement of an eight-hours day in Australia was recently defended to an English audience on the ground that the climate made it imperative. Now surely it is rather a reflection on any It is curious to remark how hysterclimate that it should in a free country ically nervous is the Australian democentail the necessity of penal restraints racy over the admission of any alien lest men should work too hard. As a race to the continent; the provinces matter of fact, the farmers, graziers, varying in shrillness of outcry against and others in the country work far more | them according to their proximity to than eight hours a day, and yet show a the equator. Queensland, which comhealthier record than the townsmen, as prises a huge extent of tropical terriwell as a healthier appearance. But in tory, is the loudest; New South Wales, truth town life is apparently so enjoy- the next to it, is nearly as loud; South able for its own sake in Australia, that Australia and Victoria are rather less it seems to deprive men-those who so. South Australia, which runs from are misleadingly called "the working north to south of the continent, has of men"— of all enterprise and ambition. course a large tropical territory to the It has generally been assumed by econ- northward; but the northern territory omists that every employee hopes some is virtually a distinct though subject day to become an employer; but those province. It cannot be denied that the working men appear to have no such Australian animosity against colored aspirations, but to seek rather to stereo- races is perfectly natural. It is genertype a class of employees who shall ally attributed exclusively to the worknever do more than a certain number of ing man's prejudice against cheap labor hours of work or receive less than a - and indeed it is doubtful whether the certain rate of wage, which class, with antipathy has any other conscious moits privileges, it shall be the special tive; but it is more than probable that function of the State to maintain and to there is an unconscious and instinctive protect. dread of any race which is more at Again it must be remembered that home in a hot climate than the Anglo

by their speech and action rendered it impossible that the experiment of the employment of white labor in tropical agriculture should be fairly tried."

So, without losing faith (as he assures us) in his conviction, though it contradicts all experience, that white labor can cope with the cultivation of the sugarcane in the tropics, Sir Samuel Griffith has carried a measure for the readmission of Polynesians.

Saxon. The Australians have also the ing to be leaders of thought, who have fate of the Southern States of the Union before them, and have noted the warning given by the negro problem. Without attempting to defend slavery, it seems but fair to acknowledge now that the motive of the South in striving to bind the negroes to the servile state was no more than the instinct of selfpreservation. How many Americans were there that thought the Civil War would produce as its principal results the negro problem, and the danger of a war of races? But if the white man chooses to engross a vast territory wherein the climate is unfavorable to him, he must take the consequences.

While Sir Samuel Griffith was preparing his manifesto of recantation, Sir Thomas Playford, the premier of South Australia, visited India to negotiate with the Indian government for the imSome years ago Queensland boldly portation of East Indian coolies into faced the realities of her position and that province. Now, as both these imported colored labor for the sugar- premiers went enthusiastically with Sir plantations — an industry from which Henry Parkes in 1888 in his impasshe expected, and still expects, great sioned protestations that Australia results. The laborers thus imported should be reserved for the "British were Polynesians, as to whose merits type," their conversion is a little refor this particular work there seems to markable. But it is easily accounted be some conflict of opinion. Two main for. "The interests of the working causes, however, conspired to put an population have been kept too excluend to this system: first, the abuses sively in view" in all the Australian and scandals of the Pacific labor traffic; provinces, and one principal result (not and, secondly, the jealousy of the white mentioned by Sir Samuel Griffith) is the working man. Accordingly in 1885 the Australian public debt. “Great is bankpremier, Sir Samuel Griffith, fixed a ruptcy," says Carlyle; "no falsehood, term when this importation of Poly-did it rise heaven-high and cover the nesians should cease. He summarized world, but bankruptcy will one day his objections against colored immigra- sweep it down and make us free of it." tion as follows:

Great also, we may add, is impecuniosity, which threatens to become bankruptcy; for this, too, peels the scales

1. That it tended to encourage the creation of large landed estates owned by absentees, to the prejudice of settle-from men's eyes and forces them to ments by working farmers.

2.It led to field labor in tropical agriculture being looked down upon as degrading and unworthy of the white

race.

face truths which they have deliberately blinked and avoided. It is áll very well for Sir Samuel Griffith to attribute the impossibility of obtaining white labor for the North Queensland 3. "The permanent existence of a sugar-plantations to the speech and aclarge servile population amongst Aus-tion of this man or that; but the true tralians, not admitted to the franchise, cause lies much deeper, and is summed is not compatible with the continu- up in the word "climate." The delibance of Australian free political institu-erate policy of closing the continent to tions."

And now, last year, Sir Samuel Griffith has discovered that among the working population, whose interests he had perhaps too exclusively in view, there has arisen a body of men, claim

colored races, at the cost of allowing the tropical territory to lie fallow, has been early defeated by impecuniosity. Somebody must be found to do work in this territory; white men will not, cannot do it, so colored men must.

According to present indications the longer it is continued, the firmer its future of tropical Australia seems likely basis and the more inevitable its perto be committed to East Indian immi-manence. Everything now points to grants. The supply of Polynesians is the importation of East Indians into far from inexhaustible; African negroes northern Australia. are not to be obtained; Chinese are not only an abomination but a terror to the Australians. East Indian coolies are abundant; and their exportation from India is not only permitted but organized. The government of India is extremely jealous for the welfare and good treatment of these emigrants; and the most elaborate enactments exist for their protection in their new homes; so that they very soon gain ideas of self-respect and independence which were quite unknown to them in India. There is no more ludicrous contrast -witness any one who has seen itthan that between the Madrassi coolie just disembarked in a strange land, the incarnation of abject pliancy, and the same individual two years later. They bring with them, of course, their habits and traditions, notably the practice of hoarding and lending to their fellows at extravagant interest; and so many of them grow rich, at any rate for a time, and occasionally even important.

Then arises the question, How far would such a race spread down over the continent? And this is extremely difficult to answer. On the one hand we have the metropolitan populations, fully a third of the whole, disinclined for hard work, bent upon the enjoyment of an easy and comfortable life, and seeking to crush competition by restraint both upon immigration and natural increase. The metropolitan towns are situated in, so to speak, the rainy fringe of the continent, where the heat, become damp, tells more against the white man's energy than in the parched interior. On the other hand, we have the country population, agricultural and pastoral, extending inland from the coast, sparser and sparser as it leaves the rainfall behind it. A recent writer on Australia does not hesitate to say that the types of man bred on the more or less watered Pacific slope and the arid interior are totally distinct; and indeed it is no more than one should expect. Nor are we surprised to hear that the latter is the better

stouter-hearted. From which the obvious conclusion is, that, broadly speaking, the district which offers the white

precisely that which is most enervating to him physically. On the Queensland sugarcane fields, which form an extreme case, the white man has abandoned the attempt to work in the damp heat.

These are the people with which, for good or for evil, Sir Thomas Playford seeks to develop the tropical territory type; more vigorous, more enduring, of South Australia. Whether he will be able to fulfil the conditions imposed by the Indian government is another question. “Free political institutions," man the best return for his work, is especially as understood in Australia, are no good guarantee for the safety of a competing race. What ought to be done is clear enough. England ought to take over tropical Australia, and govern it as a part of our Asiatic empire, to which, indeed, it really be- There are also other complications to longs; this, however, unfortunately, be considered: first, the desperate seems to be out of the question. But struggle still in progress between capwhatever may be done, the establish- ital and labor; and, secondly, impecument of a colored race in that territory can hardly be avoided much longer. It is impossible to fix a term during which colored immigration may be permitted, and at the end whereof it shall cease; for, as has been discovered in Queensland, if once established it cannot be overthrown without ruin; and the

niosity. As if the uncertainty and tyranny of the climate were not of itself far too powerful an agent in driving the people down into the towns, the Australian governments, far from striving to stop the influx, have for the most part done all they can to encourage it. They have also demoralized the work