LEGISLATIVE INDEPENDENCE.

 Previously we took occasion to demonstrate, on the basis of documents collected by Mr. Bancroft, in his History of the United States, that modern British colonists have been deprived of their just rights, and that the present system of Colonial Government and legislation is essentially unconstitutional.

At this crisis it may be useful to recapitulate the principal facts and results of our former demonstration. The precedents and principles established in the older British colonies apply now in full force to the free colonies of Australia. A knowledge of them may save much unprofitable argument, and may lead to a more speedy settlement of the great questions now under discussion.

The grand principle established by Bancroft is, that the subjects of the British Crown who planted America carried with them the whole rights and liberties to which they were entitled by the English constitution, as fully and unreservedly as if they had remained in England; and they were consequently entitled to a representative assembly, self-government, and independent legislation.

The first colony of Great Britain was that of Virginia, established in 1606, under a charter by James I. The body of adventurers on whom the charter was conferred was composed of every rank and class in the community. They comprehended twenty-one peers, ninety-eight knights, and a multitude of esquires, gentlemen, merchants, and citizens. It was declared in the charter that all persons voyaging to and settling in the colony, and the children born within its precincts, should have and enjoy all liberties, franchises, and immunities, to all intents and purposes, as if they had been abiding and born within the realm of England. Twelve years after its settlement, when the colony possessed only six hundred inhabitants, it acquired a constitution which became the model for the subsequent settlements in North America.

Its terms (says Bancroft) are few and simple. A governor, to be appointed by the company; a permanent council, likewise to be appointed by the company ; a general assembly, to be convened yearly, and to consist of the members of the council, and of two burgesses to be chosen from each of the several plantations by their respective inhabitants. The assembly might exercise full legislative authority, a negative voice being reserved to the governor, but no law or ordinance would be valid unless ratified by the company in England. With singular Justice, and a liberality without example, it was further ordered that after the government of the colony shall have been framed, no orders of the court in London shall bind the colony, unless they be in like manner ratified by the General Assembly.

Henceforward might the historian well say, "the supreme power was held to reside in the hands of the Colonial Parliament, and of the King, as King of Virginia.''

Precisely the same system was adopted in Maryland in the year 1638. The third Assembly of that colony published a declaration of rights, which was therefore established to the following effect :—

Acknowledging the duty of allegiance to the English Monarch, and securing to Lord Baltimore his prerogatives, it likewise confirmed to the inhabitants of Maryland all the liberties which an Englishman can enjoy at home, established a system of representative government, and asserted for the general assemblies in the province all such powers as may be exercised by the Commons of England.

It should be observed that these early constitutions were recognised by James I. and Charles I., the most arbitrary of English monarchs. The latter even went so far as to recognise the Virginian Legislature as an independent body, by applying to it for a monopoly of tobacco, the staple produce of the colony.

By these monarchs, and by Charles II., similar and even greater privileges were granted to the New England States, which latter, under Charles II. and the wise Lord Clarendon, became more like friendly in-dependent states than subject provinces. The charter of Connecticut, framed in 1662 by Lord Clarendon,

Conferred on the colonists unqualified power to govern themselves. They were allowed to elect all their own officers, to enact their own laws, to administer justice without appeals to England, to inflict punishments, to confer pardons, and in a word to exercise every power deliberative and active. The King, far from reserving a negative on the acts of the colony, did not even require that the laws should be transmitted for his inspection, and no provision was made for the interference of the English government in any event whatever. Connecticut was independent except in name.

To Rhode Island even greater liberality was displayed.

The supreme power was committed—the rule continues to-day—to a governor, deputy - governor, ten assistants, now called senators, and deputies from the town. It marks a singular moderation that the scruples of the inhabitants were so respected that no oath of allegiance was required of them. The laws were to be agreeable to those of England, yet with kind reference to the constitution of the place and the nature of the people."

No wonder that the thanks of the colony were voted to, "King Charles of England for his high and inestimable, yea, incomparable favor," and to Clarendon the historian, the statesman, the prime minister, who had shewn " to the colony exceeding great care and love ;" and no wonder that the Rhode Islanders continued the most loyal and the best ordered community in the British dominions.

The last proof we shall adduce of the rights of British colonists is from " A state of the Case " proposed by James Otis, of Boston, in 1764, about a hundred years after the date of the Rhode Island Charter, at a time when the British Government and Parliament are commencing usurpations which are only now in course of partial abandonment.

By the laws of nature and of nations, the voice of universal reason and of God, by statute law, and the common law, this memorial claimed for the colonists the absolute rights of Englishmen personal security, and liberty, the rights of property, the power of local legislation, subject only to the king's negative, as in Ireland, and the sole power of taxing themselves. "The authority of the Parliament of Great Britain," such were the words of this paper, "is circumscribed by bounds, which, if exceeded, their acts becomes mere power without right, and consequently void. Acts of Parliament against natural equity are void. Acts against the fundamental principles of the British institutions are void." "The wild wastes of America have been turned into pleasant habitations ; little villages in Great Britain into manufacturing towns and opulent cities ; and London itself bids fair to become the metropolis of the world. These are the fruits or commerce and liberty. The British Empire, to be perpetuated, must be built on the principles of justice." Such were the views of Otis, sent by Massachusetts to its agent in London " to be improved as he might judge proper."

The series of precedents thus laid before our readers are at the present juncture of the deepest importance. It was mainly during the period from 1606 to 1764 that all the great principles of the British Constitution were agitated, debated, and settled. The rights and liberties of the people, the privileges of parliament, and the extent of the prerogative, were all in turns discussed and contested in the cabinet, in the houses of legislation, and on the battlefield. Yet in all these struggles there was no debate as to the claims of the colonists. Even the most despotic of monarchs recognised their right to self-government and independent legislation, and refrained from exercising an obnoxious and unconstitutional prerogative. It was not till one hundred and fifty years after the establishment of British colonies that the British Parliament and Government put forward a claim of despotic authority; and the enforcement of that illegal and unconstitutional claim cost the country the loss of an empire.

It is painful to think that in regard to all the weaker colonies that remained in possession of Britain, the new usurpation was continued. In North America, in South America, in the West Indies, at the Cape of Good Hope, in Australia, the incubus of Downing-street despotism was retained. For a long time it is true Britain kept her colonies under this yoke, by tempting monopolies. Discriminating duties in favor of timber, corn, sugar, wine, &c, were the bribes that kept the colonies quiet; but no sooner had the system of free trade put an end to these sugarplums than the colonies discovered that they lived under a virtual tyranny. Those that were sufficiently powerful immediately asserted and vindicated their rights. The Canadian and the Cape provinces already possess constitutions framed by themselves; the British Ministry have extended a similar privilege to the Australian colonists and our Constitution Bill is now before Parliament.

In our present circumstances it is of the greatest importance that our rights and our position should be precisely ascertained. Last year, in consequence of the liberal declarations of the British Ministry, we suspended the elaborate demonstration of these rights ; but the postponement of the Constitution Bill, and the arbitrary conduct of the Government in now enforcing unjust measures with the strong hand, compel us to enter again upon the controversy. The importance of the demonstration will be appreciated, when it is remembered that if the privileges for which we contend are birthrights never forfeited, and not favors to be conferred by a British Parliament, then the circumstance that the Constitution Bill is postponed can have no effect in justifying the arbitrary proceedings of the British Government.

We hold that our Legislature, imperfect as it is, occupies in this colony, and so far as the colonial interests are concerned, the position of the British Parliament with reference to Her Majesty. In this view it is entitled to act as the restrainer of the prerogative. The writer whom we quoted lately on this subject states that " when the King claims rights as falling within the scope of any part of his prerogative which are opposed to the common good, there are remedial powers which bring things right, and it is one of the most important functions of the two Houses of Parliament."

The conclusion, we trust, is now plain to the meanest capacity. Unless the people of this colony have forfeited their birthright, they are entitled to free and independent legislation, and their Legislature is entitled to restrain the exercise of the Queen's prerogative, when it is opposed to the common good. How much more are they entitled and bound so to act, when the exercise of that prerogative stultifies their own acts, sets at nought the decisions of our courts, tends to bring law and justice into contempt, increases the insecurity of life and property, and is destructive of the best interests of the community at large.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic.), 17 October 1854 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4799072

THE ASIATIC MENACE.

 "The Rising Tide of Color Against White-World Supremacy." By Lothrop Stoddard, A.M., Ph.D. with an introduction by Madison Grant. 

That the utmost anxiety is felt in the United States concerning the growing strength of Japan, has been very evident of recent years. The thesis of the author of this book, who is a distinguished graduate of Harvard University, and the author of several well-known books on international subjects, is that the white supremacy of the world is in danger, and that the threat of the colored races is a very real one. Under these circumstances, one would imagine that Americans, who, to a large extent, appear to share his fears, would show more practical sympathy with Great Britain in the difficulties she is encountering in respect to the government of Egypt, India, and Mesopotamia, to say nothing of the complications which have arisen in regard to former Turkish possessions nearer Constantinople. America had much to say concerning the persecutions of the Armenians, but she has done little or nothing to assist in their protection. Mr. Madison Grant, who writes the introduction to the present volume, is also a man of standing in America, and one of the books he has written is significantly entitled "The Passing of the Great Races."

 "More than a decade ago," says Mr. Stoddard, "I became convinced that the keynote of 20th century world politics would be the relations between the primary races of mankind." He refers to the fact that before the great war broke out, he wrote of the coming "conflict of color," and declared that great communities like the United States of America, the South African Confederation, and Australasia, regarded the color question as the gravest problem of the future. The frightful weakening of the white world during the war, he fears, has opened up revolutionary, even cataclysmic possibilities. He believes, however, that colored triumphs of arms subjugating white lands are even "less to be dreaded than more enduring conquests, like migrations, which would swamp whole populations and turn countries, now white, into colored men's lands irretrievably lost to the world." He considers that a candid discussion of the issues raised should be helpful at this juncture.

 Mr. Grant, in his introduction, summarises the biological and historical background of the subject. "To some," he says, "this book may seem unduly alarming, while others as the thread of logic unrolls may recoil from the logic of the deductions." If the predictions of Mr. Stoddard's book seem far-fetched, Mr. Grant reminds Americans, one has but to consider that four times since the fall of Rome has Asia conquered to the very confines of Nordic Europe. The backbone of Western civilisation, he asserts, is racially Nordic, and if this great race, with its capacity for leadership and fighting, should ultimately pass, with it would pass that which we call civilisation. As a safeguard he calls on the Nordic races to "strike off the shackles of an inveterate altruism, discard the vain phantom of internationalism, and reassert the pride of race and the right of merit to rule."

 The great hope of the future in America, continues Mr. Grant, lies in the realisation of the working class that competition of the Nordic with the alien is fatal, whether the latter be the lowly immigrant from southern or eastern Europe, or the more obviously dangerous Oriental, against whose standards of living the white man cannot compete.

 "We must look to such of our people— our farmers and artisans—as are still of American blood to recognise and meet this danger. Our present condition is the result of following the leadership of idealists and philanthropic doctrinaires, aided and abetted by the perfectly understandable demand of our captains of industry for cheap labor. Now that Asia in the guise of Bolshevism with Semitic leadership and Chinese executioners, is organising an assault upon Western Europe, the new States —Slavic-Alpine in race, with little Nordic blood —may prove to be not frontier guards of Western Europe, but vanguards of Asia in Central Europe. None of the earlier Alpine States have held firm against Asia, and it is more than doubtful whether Poland, Bohemia, Roumania, and Jugo-Slavia can face the danger successfully, now that they have been deprived of the Nordic ruling classes through democratic institutions. Democratic ideals among a homogeneous population of Nordic blood, as in England and America, are one thing, but it is quite another for the white man to share his blood with, or entrust his ideals to, brown, yellow, black, or red men. This is suicide pure and simple, and the first victim of this amazing folly will be the white man himself."

 Mr Stoddard is very much in earnest in his statement of the case for serious thought and resolute action. He divides his book into three parts—The Rising Tide of Color, the Ebbing Tide of White, and the Deluge on the Dikes—and he provides a copious index. Added interest is lent to the book by his quotation of the arguments in favor of a White Australia. He quotes Professor C. H. Pearson, well known in Australia over 30 years ago, and other trenchant writers. He also reproduces assertions by Asiatic and other colored writers. Professor Ryntaro Nagai (Japan) before the war wrote:— "The world was not made for the white races, but for the other races as well. In Australia, South Africa, Canada, and the United States there are vast tracts of unoccupied territory." Achmet Abdullah, an English-educated Afghan, shortly before the European war, inveighed against "racial prejudice, that cowardly, wretched caste-mark of the European, and the American, the world over," and predicted "a struggle between Asia, all Asia, against Europe and America. . . . An invasion of a new Attila and Tamerlane, who will use rifles and bullets, instead of lances and spears." The impassioned Afghan proceeds:—"You are deaf to the voice of reason and fairness, and so you must be taught with the whirring swish of the sword that is red."

 When the great war broke out, says Mr. Stoddard, '"through the bazaars of Asia ran the sibilant whisper, 'The East will see the West to bed.' The chorus of mingled exultation, hate, and scorn sounded from every portion of the colored world. Chinese scholars, Japanese professors, Hindu pundits. Turkish journalists, and Afro-American editors, one and all voiced drastic criticisms of white civilisation, and hailed the war as a well-merited Nemesis on white arrogance and greed." He quotes copious extracts from writings to prove his assertion. He points to the threatened anarchy in Egypt, and the unrest in India, despite "the fairness, honesty and general efficiency" of English rule, Mr. Stoddard lays stress also on the onward march of Islamism in Africa, and the growing sense of negro race "solidarity,'' but asserts that the real danger to white control of Africa lies not in brown attack or black revolt, but in possible white weakness, through chronic discord within the white world itself. The same remark is made in regard to Latin America, where with unity "white victory is sure."

 Mr. Stoddand draws from Professor Pearson many arguments concerning the adaptability of the Chinese and their capacity to work hard and live frugally. He quotes Professor Ross as saying that under good conditions the white man can beat the yellow man in turning out work, but under bad conditions the Chinese can beat the white man, because he can better endure spoiled food, poor clothing, foul air, noise, heat, dirt, discomfort, and microbes. Reilly can '"out-do"' Ah San, but Ah San can "under-live" Reilly. Mr. Stoddard tells of the startling growth of the Japanese in California and declares "the fruitfulness of the Japanese brides is almost uncanny." First come the men, then the picture brides, then the families. Two children of Japanese parentage are born in some districts of California for every white child! "And let not Europe, the white brood land, the heart of the white world, think itself immune," he cries. Mr. Stoddard repeats with enthusiasm the "White Australia" slogan, which "is not a political theory, but a gospel" He urges that some sort of provisional understanding should be arrived at between the white world and the renascent Asia. "Unless some such understanding is reached," he fears, "the world will drift into a gigantic race war." He also desires to limit the migration of lower human types (whites) into the United States, as "such migrations upset standards, sterilise better stocks, increase low types, and compromise national fitness more than war, revolutions, or native deterioration. "Such are the things which simply must be done if we are to get through the next few decades without convulsions which may render impossible the white world's recovery."

Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1931), Saturday 16 April 1921,

CHRISTIANITY AND COMMUNISM "HAVE BOTH FAILED''

 NOTED AMERICAN STATES HIS VIEWS

 Both Christianity and Communism had failed to solve modern man's problems, said Professor Clyde Kluckhohn at Armidale.

 Professor Kluchhohn, who is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Russian Research Centre at Harvard University, is visiting Australia to give the Dyason lectures for 1952.

He spoke on "Ways of Life in Conflict" to a meeting arranged at the Teachers' College by the Armidale branch of the Institute of International Affairs.

Professor Kluckhohn said that the Communist and Jewish-Christian conceptions of human nature had been incomplete and inaccurate. They had under- and over-estimated their materials and so their theories had not been workable. Each had failed in its highest aspirations.

 Professor Kluckhohn said he thought, however, there were good reasons for believing that the ideas which could build a new and better way of life for all humanity would come primarily from the West.

 "I do not think for a minute that the resources of Western thought are exhausted,'' he said. "They are merely, at present, too split and diversified.

"But our diversity is our strength as well as our weakness of the moment. Out of its many strands can come a more true and more powerful conception of that human nature upon which all ways of life must be erected."

 Communism or other forms of totalitarianism would unquestionably possess this earth unless we could quickly make our thinking right, eliminating some of the more glaring inconsistencies between scientific knowledge and popular thought, Professor Kluckhohn added. There was a  good chance a new ideological order could be built before it was too late.

 The beliefs that bound the West should not, however, be allowed to remain so implicit and unformulated and so backward-looking. We would lose the cold war and a possible hot war if we continued to fight with the technology of 1952, but with the ideas of 1852.

The fact that Communist ideology was itself terribly dated and scientifically unacceptable did not make it less threatening to the Democracies as a secular religion unless and until we could oppose to it a formulation that was equally impressive, equally coherent internally, but more soundly founded upon the facts of external and human nature.

 Professor Kluckhohn said he believed the dream of an eventual world order was not just a phantasy.

 "As a matter of fact," he said, "if one looks below the surface of current controversies , one can detect many agreements.

 "I have examined carefully certain utterances by Senator Robert Taft and Comrade Joseph Stalin in which each stated what he wanted for his people. There was amazing similarity, point by point. The disagreements were over the means by which these ends were to be attained. 

"Don't misunderstand me— I know that millions have perished in human history in quarrels over means. Nevertheless it remains important that men and women over the surface of this earth want pretty much the same, simple things — and their leaders know it.

 "Looking at it in anthropological perspective, the broad similarities are far more distinctive and striking than the differences.

 "Even in theory, the convergences between Marxism and Western social science are far greater than either side is willing to admit publicly these days."

 Dissatisfaction In Russia.

 Professor Kluckhohn spoke of the possibility of an uprising in Russia. Dissatisfaction created by the gap between expectation and reality was general throughout Soviet society, he said.

 The Russian people were dissatisfied with their low standard of living, with the power of the police, with the official intolerance of religion and with the lack of popular participation in Government.

 The instabilities of the govemmental system were, however, the only ones that could set off a major crisis under anything like the present conditions.

 The dissatisfactions could play an important part once there was an open struggle for power at the top. Then each conflicting group would bid for popular support to defeat its rivals.

 Only under these circumstances would the disaffection, which was undoubtedly already widespread, really count.

 "When, however, history offers to the Russian citizen the possibility of an alternative course which better suits his aspirations, it is altogether likely that he will seize it," Professor Kluckhohn declared.

 "Millions did even under the unpromising circumstances of German invasion."

 The Soviet way of life; Professor Kluckhohn added, was inherently unstable because it denied in practice the deepest human aspirations, because it was based on a false conception of human nature, because it throttled free scientific inquiry, and because the unity it purported to offer had disintegrated intellectually and had always been distorted in application.

 Communist philosophy, being the culmination of a long stream of thought leading from Plato to Hegel and other continental thinkers, placed a higher value on equality than on liberty. 

 It allowed restraints on personal liberty, provided these restraints were applicable to all equally. The central concept was what was good for society, not a concept of individual fulfilment or individual morality.

 The Anglo-American line on the other hand placed liberty higher than equality. It had traditionally restrained the legislature and the institutions rather than the individual. It had surrounded the individual with safeguards such as appeared, for example, in the Bill of Rights. These conceptions traced from the Stoic philosophers and from the notion proclaimed by 17th and 18th century English-speaking theologians that man's conscience required him to accept personal responsibility for his acts as a citizen.

 Bogus Promises

"From this situation arises the challenge of the Communist way of life to ours," said Professor Kluckhohn. "All the peoples of the world outside the Soviet orbit are to a greater or lesser degree confused as to what is a right way of thinking and a desirable way of living.

 "Despite the fact that the Heroic Age of Soviet Communism is over in its homeland, the slogans still have some pull among those who have not experienced the doubtful benefits of living under a police state regime. 

"The promises, however bogus, of orderly life and unity of thought have an unhealthy appeal for the disadvantaged, the frightened, the bewildered the worn out with struggle and disillusionment.

 "And not solely for these. Many Communists in France Italy, India, Africa and other parts of the world are genuine idealists in a way which we of the Anglo-Saxon tradition were once the real revolutionary idealists of the world.

 "The idealism of Communists outside Russia is misplaced and naive; naive because of what has actually gone on in all countries where Communism has been put into practice. Misplaced because Marxism as a system of thought has disintegrated.

 "Nevertheless the humanitarian aspirations of the old Marxism still exert a powerful appeal. And intellectual idealists continue to believe that they have in the worldly religion of Communism an answer to the meaningless chaos and confusion that they have seen. They are stirred by the comprehensiveness and explicitness of the scheme.

 "Hence men and women are both pushed towards Communism by fright and bewilderment and pulled to it by motives that can only be described honestly as idealistic."

 "Something Wrong Somewhere."

 In the discussion that followed Professor Kluckhohn's lecture, Dean M. K. Jones said he felt it was man, not Christianity, that had failed. Man had misinterpreted Christianity.

 Professor Kluckhohn replied: "I grant you that true Christianity has not been applied yet. You say it is man, not Christianity, that has failed. Yes, that may be so, but it seems that if after 2000 years Christianity has been applied only by a very, very few select souls, then there must be a huge gap between the human material and the lofty ethic. There is something: wrong somewhere.

 "It seems perfectly clear that Christianity is not going to save us in our present crisis. If it does, it will do so only after the worst holocaust the world has ever seen. As an anthropologist, I can't get around that one. 

"It is my unhappy conclusion that the present Christian Churches are not going to bring order to the diverse cultures of the world.

 ''The Churches not only want to teach heathens the gospel, but they want to destroy the heathen's way of life root and branch. I cannot see that this will work.

 "I am forced by historical fact to the conclusion that, despite the nobility of the four gospels, no peoples known to history have been as murderous and destructive as Christian peoples have been."

 Chairman of the meeting was Mr. E. W. Dunlop, president of the Armidale branch of the Institute for International Affairs. A vote of thanks to Dr. Kluckhohn was moved by Dr. R. B. Austin and Mr. E. J. Tapp.

Uralla Times (NSW ), 11 September 1952  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article175993992

THROUGH PERSIA BY CARAVAN.*

 When the Shah of Persia visited London a few years ago, many enthusiastic people entertained high hopes that the monarch's experiences of Western civilisation might induce him, on returning home, to inaugurate a new era of progress in the history of a country which has so illustrious a past, and which calls up so many classic memories. Baron Reuter, it was said, had obtained certain conceptions which would enable him to lift Persia out of her chronic state of decay, and give her a fresh start after a modern and Western fashion. The snorting of the steam horse was to be heard in the romantic land of the Arabian Nights, and comfortable railway carriages were to supersede the rules and "yaboos" of the slow moving caravans. But Western influences failed to do their work. The Shah went back to Tehran taking with him an album peopled with actresses as a memento of European life, and after giving his mind to the publication of that great literary effort, his famous diary, he subsided into the usual state of indifference, satisfied if only supplies were forthcoming to minister to his pleasures. Persia remains a land of ruin and decay and to all appearance there is no Cyrus looming on the horizon who might raise it up from its degradation, and restore it to its ancient grandeur.

Mr Arthur Arnold has written a very pleasant and readable book, which bears, on the face of it, many marks of trustworthiness both in its facts and inferences. It is the fault of modern travellers that they ask us to accept very sweeping conclusions on the strength of very scanty data. Mr. Arnold records what he himself saw and heard, and, where his assertions require it, he supports them with the authority of more experienced men than himself. He and his wife (who in pluck and endurance seems another Lady Baker) started on their journey by way of the Russian capital Moscow, and Nijni Novgorod, sailing down the Volga to the Caspian, which they traversed from north to south, and landing at Enzelli, from which point they began their journey through Persia. Leaving the Caspian early in October they travelled southward by way of Teheran, Ispahan, and Shiraz reaching Bushire, on the Persian Gulf, in February.

After reading Mr Arnold's two volumes, only one conclusion is possible that the state of things in Persia is almost as bad as it can be. Oriental monarchs have ever been tyrants and despots. A halo of supernatural dignity surrounds them in the eyes of their subjects, even though the divinity of their claims asserts itself by force and the most reckless disregard of human life. In the official language of his country, the Shah of Persia is styled “ Zil-ullah" or " Shadow of God, a name which would seem to indicate a monarch ever ready to exercise justice and to maintain the right. But the reality is very different. The Shah's Government, to use Mr Freeman's language of Turkish rule, is “an organised system of brigandage," and the Shah himself is the chief brigand, who receives the largest share of the plunder. The people of Persia are as so many poor sheep who exist for the special benefit of their rulers. No shadow of a doubt ever seems to cross the minds of the Shah or the governors of his provinces as to their absolute liberty to dispose of the lives and persons, the property and rights, of everyone in Persia. And the marvellous thing about it all is that the people submit as a matter of course, in a hopeless, despairing way, as if redress for their grievous wrongs were not to be thought of. The government is carried on as though the country were to last for a few years only, the object of the rulers being their own momentary and immediate advantage. The governors, who generally receive their appointments from the Shah in consideration of large bribes, avail themselves of their opportunities to the fullest extent. They employ certain subordinates, whose duty it is to collect the taxes, a large proportion of which they greedily appropriate to themselves, after sending a sufficient sum to their Royal master, who is said to be very fond of presents." Taxation in Persia is not conducted on any nicely-balanced principles of economic science. The tax-gatherers methods are simple and direct ; his arguments are bullets and swords, and his operations are so effectively conducted that "conscience-money" would seem to him a very grim joke. His requirements are almost unlimited, and, in many provinces, the peasantry are literally robbed of everything they possess. Occasionally the right to collect the taxes of certain districts is sold to some khan for a fixed sum, which is paid to the Government, that is, to the Shah and the high officials around him, who undertake to require no accounts and to ask no questions. The result can readily be imagined. " Thrice the amount, " says Mr. Arnold, of the British Prime Minister's salary, or twice that of the President of the United States does not satisfy men of the first official rank in Persia. And while the Prince Governors in the provinces and all the high functionaries of state plunge their greedy hands thus deep into the miserable revenue, forced—often at the bayonet's point— from the poorest of peasants, the soldiery are not seldom marauders, with the excuse that they cannot obtain their pay from the Government. The creditors of the peasants and small traders are generally in the uniform of the Shah. In Persia the trade of small money-lenders is usually carried on by soldiers, for these only feel sure of the requisite power to recover their loans. The defaulter well knows that if he does not repay the soldier, his house or his store in the bazaar will be plundered of all that is worth taking by a gang of military money-lenders." Bribery, too, is universal in official life. The judgment of a governor is given, as a rule, in favour of the highest bidder. Minor officials bribe their superiors, who keep up the system until the foot of the throne is reached, and the demands of its occupant fairly satisfied. Even in the army it is the same. The soldiers shirk drill that they may engage in more profitable employment and the officers are appeased by small bribes. Those latter, in their turn, have to bribe the Minister who pays them, and so it goes on. It would be unfair, however, to say that this corruption is absolutely universal. There have been several Persian Ministers who have tried to check the evil, and to organise an honest system of collecting the revenue, but their efforts, in the face of those who have, as it were a vested right in robbery and pillage, have naturally been unsuccessful. Not long ago, the Shah was induced to have placed in every large town a " box of Justice," in which the people were asked to lodge any complaints which they had against the officials. The boxes were carefully watched, and consequently seldom used, the few who did use them finding out to their cost that silence was their best policy. In trying to punish the robbers, too, some vigorous governors, possessed of good intentions, have administered justice with more zeal than discretion. When a robbery takes place— especially if it be a robbery of a caravan of Europeans—the chief idea seems to be that some one must suffer, and no very nice discrimination is used in the choice of the victims. The order given on such an occasion varies but slightly from that of the Queen of Wonderland—" Off with somebody's head."

The results of such a system of Government may be easily guessed. Persia is going steadily backwards, while those who alone are influential throughout the country watch the process of retrogression with the most absolute complacency. The peasantry are utterly unable to make way against robbers and tax-gatherers, who seem to be omnipresent in bad years as well as good. Large tracts of the country are barren and rocky, but even in those districts which are admirably suited for cultivation of the most productive kind, agriculture is much neglected. The same plough which scraped the soil in the days of Constantine, and the much earlier days of Herodotus, is still used by the Persian farmer, to whom the more effective English implement would appear indeed a gift from Allah. Nor is Mr. Arnold's account of life in the villages and towns of a more cheerful description. The sanitary arrangements are thoroughly bad, and the amount of perfectly avoidable suffering and discomfort is almost incredible. A great deal of the ophthalmia which prevails during the oppressively hot summer might be avoided by a free use of water, but the Persian method of obeying the injunctions of the Koran respecting ablutions has no special bearing upon cleanliness. In the winter, too, when the cold is extreme and life a prolonged shiver, the wretched people live in the most uncomfortable houses where doors and windows are of the rudest manufacture. Both Teheran and Ispahan are poor places—cities of mud— with no grand buildings upon which to rest the eye and with absolutely none of that gorgeous splendour which is generally associated in the popular mind with the capitals of the East. "From one end of Persia to the other," says Mr Arnold, " this miserable condition of decay, dilapidation, and ruin is characteristic of all public edifices—the mosques palaces bridges—everything. It is probably correct to say that this invariable condition is a consequence of the universal corruption of the Government. The work of maintenance and repair belongs to the Executive Government, and the funds which should be thus expended pass into the rapacious pockets of the governors of the country. The gross neglect of useful public works in Persia recalled to my mind a passage in which Adam Smith refers to this as one of the worst symptoms of the worst administration. He nearly describes the state of things in Persia in the following passage, which had reference to the condition of the bye roads in France about the middle of the 18th century, with the difference that in Persia no one delights in expenditure of any sort for the public advantage. Expenditure is never made except with a view to private plunder. "The proud minister of an ostentatious court may frequently take pleasure in executing a work of splendour and magnificence, such as a great highway which is frequently seen by the principal nobility, whose applause not only flatter his vanity, but even contribute to support his interest at court. But to execute a number of little works, in which nothing that can be done can make any great appearance, or excite the smallest degree of admiration in any traveller, and which, in short, have nothing to recommend them but their extreme utility, is a business which appears in every respect too mean and paltry to merit the attention of so great a magistrate. Under such an administration, therefore, such works are almost entirely neglected.' "

But notwithstanding all these depressing indications of bad government, travel in Persia is not altogether devoid of some counterbalancing charms. The traveller, it is true, has to depend upon his servants' skill and honesty to the fullest extent. If they fail him, his chances of comfort are very small, for the wayside caravanserai are not as our wayside inns, while the Chapar-Kanah is an hotel a little less miserable than a bush shanty. But where the servants are honest and the cook a success, as seems to have been the case with Mr. and Mrs Arnold, two English people can travel through Persia with the average amount of grumbling. The social life of the country presents many features of interest, and when the traveller can forget facts and look at everything he sees from the artistic point of view, there still lingers in the towns the spirit of the Arabian Nights. Old friends out of the wonderful tales are still to be got in the busy bazaars, haggling over a bargain in that masterly fashion peculiar to the East, or wrapt in what seems to be the deepest contemplation. There is the stalwart porter, the hamal, ready to obey the summons of the mysterious lady, whenever she may appear—the " Hadji," too, in gorgeous turban, cloak and tunic, whom all salute as one who has made his pilgrimage to far-famed Mecca—and the priest or moollah, riding forth on his white donkey and conscious of the power which belongs to his caste. There are still the two great mysteries of Persian life— (we wonder why Mr Wilkie Collins has never turned them to account)— " the veiled lady and the walled up house."

"No Giaour," Mr Arnold writes, “ can see even the eyes of a Persian woman of the middle and superior classes. She moves through the streets and bazaars on her white donkey, or on foot, in complete disguise. Even her husband would not recognise her. She is covered—as I described the women of Resht—from head to foot in the loose chudder of indigo, or black dyed cotton or silk. Over her face there is the long white veil, tied across the chudder, where that envelope covers all but the visage. The legs are hidden in long trousers of cotton or silk of the same colour as the chudder, which are not worn in the house. In all her outdoor life she is a moving mystery. She may be young or old, white or black, fair or ugly on a mission of sin, or upon an errand of mercy, no one knows who she is as she shuffles along upon shoes which are difficult to keep upon her feet, as the upper leather ends far before the heel. She raises at some mud walled house an iron knocker upon a door like that of a fortification, is admitted, the door is closed, and what goes on within that house, what is the fate of the women, the children and the slaves, no one outside can know. There is no window from which they can communicate with the outer world— it is a despotism within a despotism. Each one of these walled houses is the seat of despotic sovereignty—established and confirmed by the greatest power in Persia—that of the Koran." So much for the towns. In journeying down the country from north to south, the travellers greatly enjoyed the scenery, which was as varied as it was grand and beautiful. Persia, according to Mr. Arnold, is the land of magnificent distances. In the summer they saw the mountains of the north, which are rich in metallic ores, glow with a rare and gorgeous beauty in the light of the morning and evening sun, while in winter they passed across the vast heights of the south, where the prospect was bleak and desolate as a scene in the Polar regions. They had a hurried look at the ruins of Persepolis—tombs and halls of the great kings who helped to mould the history of the world—but all that Mr Arnold says on the subject, and much more, may be found in the Five Great Monarchies of Professor Rawlinson.

There are two questions raised by Mr. Arnold in his book to which we must refer before closing this notice. The first is part of a subject which in these days has become chronic—the relation of Russia and England in the East, the reference in this case being especially to Persia. It seems to be a settled idea in the Shah's dominions that Russia and England must of necessity be rivals, and the disposition of the Persian Government is shown by the fact that while there is a preference for England, the representations of Russia on any subject are listened to with marked attention. The reason is not far to seek. Russia has quietly appropriated all the country on the eastern side of the Caspian, and to the south of her possessions in that quarter lies one of the richest and best provinces of Persia, which could be occupied very easily by a Russian army. The Shah does well, therefore, to cultivate friendly relations with that other "shadow of God," Czar Alexander, whose name in the East is associated with a great and mighty potentate. From recent rumours which have reached us, it is not impossible that we may hear something more of Russian influence in Persia and see some of its results. The army of the Shah is not a very effective one, but it would be useful as an ally. Mr. Arnold alludes particularly to the question of commerce. The English entrance to the country is by Bushire on the Persian Gulf, the Russian entrance is by way of the Caspian, to which the railway from St. Petersburg is almost complete ; but as Ispahan, the central point of trade, is much more easily got at from the north than from the south, Russia has it, for the most part, all her own way. This in itself would be no great calamity, except in the eyes of those whose national and commercial creed is summed up in a single phrase—" British interests"—a phrase which is all-powerful at the present moment. The fact is, however, that the policy of Russia, in matters of trade, is eminently short-sighted and selfish. She holds to the worn-out policy of protection, and, having the command of many markets, she forces upon her semi-barbarous neighbours hardware and cotton manufactures of a vastly inferior kind to those of England. On his way down from St Petersburg, Mr Arnold saw that strange sight—the great fair of Nijni Novgorod— and there discovered that Russia supplied the Asiatics with thousands of such articles as knives locks, tools, &c, all of a most inferior kind and all dearer than the same articles of English manufacture— such policy being dictated by the " mistaken belief that this provision of inferior articles to the many for the benefit of the few, is advantageous to the general welfare of the Russian Empire." This of course applies to Persia as well as to other Eastern countries. Mr. Arnold thinks however, that the influence of Russia might be greatly counteracted by our employing a new route. He adopts the suggestion that English goods, instead of being conveyed over a dangerous and difficult road from Bushire viâ Shiraz to Ispahan, should be sent in light steamers up the famed waters of the Tigris and Euphrates as far as Mohommerah, thence by the River Karun to Shuster, and on by mule trains to Ispahan. The gain on the land journey would be about 230 miles a very large distance in a country where railways are unknown. The suggestion, Mr Arnold thinks is a good one both for Persian and British interests. As regards railways, he is doubtful whether they would pay, and whether the Shah's Government could be depended on in the event of concessions being made.

The other point to which we referred is the relation of Mohammedanism to civilisation, —not to ironclads and telegraph wires, bonds and breechloaders but to "the extension of civil rights—the co-existence of the supremacy of law with the liberty of individuals to develop and employ their faculties for their own utmost happiness and advantage." In Persia the Koran is all powerful, as it is in Turkey, and the priests of Islam have more influence than the Government. The Christians are under many disadvantages, and it may be safely asserted that in neither Persia nor Turkey do they enjoy anything like security for life and property. Mr Arnold's statement of the case is exceedingly moderate. The Christians in Turkey more particularly are, he says, often dishonest, not seldom drunken, and of very inferior political capacity. Their priests, like the priests of the Eastern Church generally, are ignorant and bigoted, often immoral. But their vices are such as ages of oppression would produce anywhere, and such, moreover, as religious and political liberty would to a great extent remove. Their religion is a religion of toleration and freedom, when rightly understood and honestly applied. With Islam it is different. The Koran is unmistakably and essentially intolerant, while many of its motives for good conduct on the part of those who believe in it are of the most doubtful character. Mr Arnold, after saying that he has no wish to produce "an impression very favourable to the Christians of Turkey and Persia," closes his interesting book with the following passage :—"For this much I am always prepared to contend ; they do possess and their masters do not possess, a religion which admits of progressive developments and interpretations. The progress of humanity may for all time be illumined by the morals of the gospel of Christ. It is nothing to show that Mahommedanism is more successful in proselytising Eastern peoples than the harshly dogmatic, unchristian 'Christianity' of some dogmatic preachers. We may develope and interpret Christ's teaching as universal, for all sorts and conditions of men, and without distinction of sex. The purest doctrines of liberty entered the world by the mouth of Christ. Mahommedanism is a democracy for men, and not for all men, but only for such as are not slaves; and with these last and lowest the whole sex of women is indirectly placed. The religion of Islam is opposed to progress, and must decline with the irresistible advance of civilisation."

* Through Persia by Caravan. By Arthur Arnold. In two volumes. London : Tinsley Brothers. 1877.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. ),  1877http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article5929242

The Social Drift in Modern Life.

 LECTURE BY REV. CANON PIKE.

By modern life I mean, in these remarks, the life of the European Civilisation from about the middle of the latter half of the 18th century, down to the present ; and by the Social Drift, I mean the general tendency of  social life during that period and at present. I shall venture to circumscribe the subject a little further. In certain European countries the leading tendencies of progress are not being displayed in any degree that is likely to help us. They would enter into a discussion of this sort mainly as illustrations of deficiency, rather than as examples of the principles I hope to set before you; and they belong to an order of things, really outside the range of the progressive forces of modern life. The countries I mean are those debouching on the Mediterranean Sea, countries which, from being the centre and pivot of the world's activities for many centuries have gradually fallen into a subordinate place in men's affairs. It is to the races of north-western Europe and of North America, that the task has devolved of carrying on aggressively the advance work of human society; and in the Anglo-Saxon branch the forces operating have their freest play.

 The beginning of an epoch in the world's life is marked by the liberation into the active affairs of men of certain principles of pure thought. By way of illustrating this fact allow me to refer you to the greatest epoch in the world's history. The Christian era was ushered in by the spread of certain new principles of thought, and corresponding ideals of life. A new standard of conduct, based upon the idea of the infinite value of the human soul, and the proclamation of the brotherhood of man, backed by a sanction of extraordinary strength; these are the starting points of that unprecedented uplifting of mankind, and the secret of those unparalleled advantages enjoyed by the races now associated with the name of the Christian Religion. Similarly, after the great upheaval of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, known as the Reformation, there came to be liberated into the life of the active and energetic people of Northern Europe, philosophic principles, which being ultimately accepted by influential bodies of men exercised a profound determinative effect upon the life of the world. For the sake of convenience, and because their names stand out most prominently as giving identity to two opposite systems of pure thought, Emmanuel Kant and David Hume may be accepted as the directing minds of the new movements and forces. Of course it is impossible to compress the systems of these great thinkers into the space at our disposal just now; but a sufficiently clear idea of them may be gathered from a brief statement to enable us to recognise them as they display their influence in the social life of our time. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher, in his treatise on " Human Nature" conceives the contents of that nature to consist simply and solely of sensations which stand related to nothing but what is comprehended within the range of experiences. In other words, man is what the past of the individual and the race has made him, no more and no less. The impressions made by Nature upon the senses and the recollections of these impressions, these things added up are the full account of human life. His own words are: " We are nothing but the series of our impressions and ideas." We have no direct concern with the philosophical consequences of such a doctrine as this, except that we must try to understand its bearings upon the social movement to which it gave force. You will see, however, that it means that any human being living in the present with all his faculties and instincts, however mean or however magnificent, is what he is simply because his progenitors bequeathed to him the nervous system which he now possesses. The explanation of him is to be found in the past; he is an aggregation of survivals. What we call his morals, his ideas of right and wrong, are the result of calculation as to what is likely to prove useful his own interests, well-understood, and regarded in an enlightened way, are the standard of conduct. Whatever contributes to the advancing of these interests is right; whatever fails to do that, is wrong. Hume's words are: "Whatever produces satisfaction is virtue; everything which gives uneasiness in human actions is called vice." He throws these principles into the social centre by saying that in the case of that "injustice which is so far away from our own interests as to in no way affect us, it still displeases us because we consider it as prejudicial to human society ;" but that still leaves our own sensations, our interests, our pleasures or displeasures, " what we consider," as the final court of appeal in moral questions. It makes Pain and Pleasure the dictators of what we ought or ought not to do ; and it was quite logical for one of Hume's successors to say that " the talisman of arrogancy, indolence, and ignorance," "an authoritative impostor," was the word " ought," as understood to imply the rights of Conscience. Hume had to deal with human nature on its social side, with man as a gregarious animal, living in communities, organised into societies, states, and nations. Here again his theory of human nature applies. The community has no real existence, for it " is simply the sum of the interest of the several members who compose it." The individual members are by nature quite independent of each other, being connected together by a mere accidental juxtaposition; and they are therefore in nature driven to maintain their independence and rights at all costs. The interests of society are no more than the interests of its component members for the time being; and the ruling factor of social life is the rivalry of interests between those members. In other words economics is the essence of all life and progress.

 Emmanuel Kant stands out as the great exponent of a quite opposite theory of life, the influence of which is in many directions neutralising the effect of Hume's doctrines. He, also, began with an analysis of Human Nature. He distinguished in it a quality or conviction which belongs to an order of things far beyond the range of things seen or experienced, and therefore outside the limits of man's understanding. This quality or conviction is to be regarded as having truth for its basis, and also as being a vital factor in the determination of our conduct as regards the interests with which we are surrounded. This is the uplifting factor of human life. Man is constituted by something altogether outside mere experiences past or present, and is related to ends quite beyond his own interests. What Hume calls our impressions and the recollections of these impressions and which we know by the common name of experiences, are not Kant tells us, received upon the mind like writing on a blank tablet. The mind itself contributes to every impression it receives. There is something in the mind which meets this something falling into it. Our experiences are not merely the result of an inherited nervous system. They are created by the co-operation of the native contents of the mind, and the impressions which come to us. In the moral realm he finds that the mind contains a "categorical imperative," an absolute authority which bids us do or forbear. An unrestrained "Thou shalt," or "Thou shalt not," which knows no "if" or " but," speaks the thing that man is bound to do ; and every individual act is the expression of this universal principle of duty. So far does he carry this principle of the moral " must," that he says the mind informs us that it ought to be absolutely triumphant in us, we should yield it perfect obedience, and be perfectly virtuous. But, as in this life man never is, nor can be this, we must be immortal ; and so stand related to Infinity, which is God. The social bearings of these doctrines are manifold, but two outstanding points must be noticed. The exceeding great demand put upon man by his moral nature, that he shall become perfectly virtuous, can only be met under conditions of freedom. Any limitation put upon freedom is of the nature of a hindrance to the fulfilment of the great "Ought," the discharge of the infinite responsibility. Men must always be at full liberty to strive after and attain the highest virtue and the greatest happiness, virtue being the condition of which happiness is the crown. Freedom, therefore, is the constant factor of that Social State which flows out from the Kantian philosophy, in regard to its moral bearings. But Kant also conceives man as being related to the Infinite, which is God; and his relationship is the overmastering and dominating one. Society is constituted through it. It is no aggregation, or accidental correlation of individual interests which may war against each other and of which the strongest takes the palm. It is grounded upon a supreme responsibility to the Eternal. Our social relationships and duties are no shrewd calculations of personal interests; but solemn duties owed to one another and to the Infinite Personality. Kant founds his theory of Society upon three fundamental principles: Freedom, Immortality, and God.

 Quite another school of social teaching draws its vitality from these principles of warring interests. Germany is the home of this development, too; and the writings of Nietzsche fairly represent its trend. He draws sword on behalf of the upper classes, just as Marx leads the proletariat. The real masters, the caste designed by nature to rule, have, he says, been robbed of their rights by the sentimental philanthropy and religion to which they have submitted. To have allowed themselves to surrender power into the hands of their inferiors, and to have trifled with the notion of a pretended equality is in the last degree absurd. He would have the ruling classes renounce the Christian religion, and to emancipate themselves from its narcotic morality. It has enabled the serf to enlist sympathy, to obtain votes, to gain the upper hand. All the talk about Christian sympathy and brotherly love has resulted in the mawkish, contemptible consideration of a superior for his natural inferiors. The State is fast becoming a specious arrangement by which the best men are kept out of their own. Let us have no more of it. " A new commandment I give an to you; Become hard, my brethren.'' Put away parleying about the rights of man, which are the empty phrases of an effete religion. " We are in possession, we are the strong ; the best belongs to me and mine, and if men give us nothing, then we take them; the best food, the purest sky, the strongest though the fairest women." Evidently Hume's and Mill's postulates and axioms can be made to do service in more directions than one. Both the Marxean Socialism and this recent Nietzschian individualism proceed from identical premisses, which account for man as a series of impressions and ideas, for society as an arrangement by which the unrestrained pursuit of enlightened self-interest is to bring about harmony between the interests of the individual and those of the State. This war of interests with all it has involved, good and bad, is a characteristic of the social drift in modern life.

 Another and apparently opposing force has been at work collaterally and co-incidently. At scarcely any moment have the principles of Utilitarianism been permitted their full logical embodiment in practice. There is a class of facts for which unrestrained competition makes no provision, and which is left out of reckoning by the doctrine that the State should restrict its intervention in matters of business to the narrowest limits. Unrestricted private enterprise was itself the cause of a great mass of the suffering which Mill thought was so unpleasant to behold. It has been found that business will always adjust itself to the level of those qualities which contribute most directly to success under the conditions of unregulated competition. A suppositional case will illustrate my meaning. Ten men compete in tne market for the supply of cotton. Nine of them have a profound regard for those moral considerations which forbid such things as the employment of child labor, the overworking of employees, and the giving of a wage below the living standard. But the tenth man has no moral sense. He looks after nothing but large sales, good profits, and a broad market. What is the result? He comes into free competition with the others, and as buyers only trouble about qualify and prices, the nine can choose between losing the market, and adopting the immoral man's methods. Since the accepted utilitarian standard of conduct demands no consideration for any interests but one's own, there is nothing in the nature of free competition to forbid them. And thus business tends to be dragged down to the lowest level. I need not tell you that this is no imaginary thing, nor need I dilate upon the terrible social evils to which it gave rise. The growth of those evils to proportions calculated to alarm the most phlegmatic, marked the utter failure of the teachings of the school of Mill to bring about that fixed and unchanging state of things in which there would be an equilibrium between the interests of the individual and of the State, an equilibrium of perfected happiness for all. As wealth increased men continued to decay.

 Very early in the century the principle of non-intervention was violated in obedience to another imperative demand. In the year 1802 the State forbad the employment of apprenticed pauper children for more than twelve hours a day. Nothing was said about an age limit for child workers, nor in fact was anything done for any but those of the pauper class. It took nearly twenty years for the State to muster up courage enough to forbid the employment of children under nine years of age, and to fix a twelve hours' day for all workers under sixteen years of age. In the thirties, the Manchester capitalists vigorously and successfully protested against State intervention in the direction of regulating the conditions of free adult labour. But from that time down to the present a long list of measures have marked the State's sense of its right to interfere in the relations between labour and capital. That is not the only important change that has taken place. Perhaps the most striking result of the development of the principle of voluntary association for social ends which was so strongly advocated by John Stuart Mill, has been the growth of trades-unionism. These organisations are in theory voluntary associations; and they have brought to bear upon the competitive spirit of the time the whole force of the combined will of the working classes. Following out the utilitarian rule, they have pursued the interests of the labourer in competition and struggle against the interests of the employer, with a view to raising the standards of living. For a great many years this principle was followed, with the result that frequent strikes, lock-outs, and other attendant circumstances, indicated the war of interests that always raged in the existing social order. Within the past few years the trades-unions have ceased to confine their attention to the voluntary method. They have largely adopted the principle of State intervention for this purpose of procuring their ends, and have consequently entered the arena of politics with a view to capturing the forces of the State to enable them to better their conditions. In that transition they have crossed the boundary line that separates free competition from State interference.

 Two other forms of the application of the principle of unrestricted private enterprise need to be noticed before we have in view the gigantic forces with which the principle opposed to the Utilitarian doctrine has to grapple. Acting on the lines of voluntary association these have been formed, in several great commercial countries, but especially in the United States, great combinations of capital for the purpose of controlling the whole of some particular industrial and commercial activity; and so to form a virtual monopoly. The first of these was the Standard Oil Trust, organised in 1882; and since then most of the great industries of the world have been drawn more or less into the vortex. The aim of these combines is to prevent the waste of competition, to control markets to become possessed of the world's living resources for the benefit of the wealthier classes. It is a voluntary association in the interests of a class, unconsciously obeying the new commandment of Nietzsche. The owners of the millions of capital involved are in the business solely for the purpose of making all the money they can. I need not say to what extent such combinations may become able to direct the forces of the State. It is significant that hitherto all the efforts made in the United States to check their growth have failed ; and we have the result of monopolies existing for the exploiting of the people, in defiance of cities and states. One writer, an experienced United States politician, says: "I see enough every day to satisfy me that the petitions, prayers, protestations, and profanity of sixty millions of people are not as strong to control legislative action as the influence and effort of the head of a single combine with fifty million dollars at his back."

 That the drift of things indicated by the existence of these great associations is not calculated to end in the amelioration of the conditions against which the social legislation of England has been directed, will become more apparent when we remember that the competitive agencies of trade and commerce are rapidly overleaping international boundaries. The Lancashire cotton spinner is competing in the world's market with the cheap labour of India. Japan is rapidly being brought into the arena, and is entering the lists in China, against the world's industries. What the international aspect of this question implies may be faintly seen in the light of one small matter. The coaling of a Japanese trading steamship in its home ports is done by young girls. A fringe of rising platforms four or five in number surrounds the ship, the lowest being just above the level of the sampan which brings the coal alongside. On the platforms stand girls, in lines of steps above. The coal is filled into baskets, and these are passed from girl to girl until they reach their destination. The work is done with such rapidity and skill that between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon a thousand tons of coal will pass from the sampans to the ship. There you have the international aspects of free competition in a nutshell; and a fair basis for the settlement of such questions as Freetrade, Preferentialism, White Australia, and many other social problems.

 I spoke just now, of the beginnings of those violations of the principle of non-intervention by the State which have gone so far to better the conditions, and raise the standards, of life in Europe. The mere narration of its history is not a matter that need engage our attention. We are more concerned with the forces and causes that lay behind it. It has brought about a condition of things of which hardly any one in these days openly disapproves. No matter which way a man's personal interests might lie he is ready enough when speaking in the hearing of his fellow men, to agree that the movement that has brought women out of coal mines, has prohibited infant labour, has regulated the working day so as to bring it within reasonable limits, has made sweating offensive to every respectable citizen, and the sweater an object of contempt amongst men, not to mention a multitude of other changes of the same kind, has proved a priceless benefit to society. It is a movement which is still in progress, and which will be the more effectively directed the better it is understood.

 For the principles which have underlain the forces of the movement we must look to the doctrines of Emmanuel Kant, and the general teachings of the Christian religion. Kant's conception of man as a being standing related, not merely to his own past, a series of impressions and ideas, but to infinite and eternal things, sheds upon him a dignity, and opens to him the vision of a destiny, quite beyond the range of mere personal interests. The haunting sense of responsibility to these infinite and eternal things has been a great fund of social force for man's uplifting. Gleamings of immortality have visited the minds of men, and have brought the significance of this infinite relationship within the bounds of immediate duties to be done. These natural contents of the human mind have been ratified and endorsed by those teachings of Christianity which have brought men's spirits into communication with the Eternal God. And the consequence has been that wherever that religion has been really understood and applied, it has deepened the sense of responsibility, stimulated the desire for freedom, softened and developed the sympathies, and created a rich reserve of social energy.

 It has been popularly imagined that no concession has ever been made by the ruling classes to those beneath them until it has been wrung from them by fear. I say nothing of the reluctance with which they have sometimes surrendered their prescriptive privileges; but, had their determination to hold them been as brutal as is sometimes represented, it must be remembered that they could have remained fortified and invincible to this day. The passing of the Reform Bill of 1833 may be cited as an almost classical Instance of this confusion. The Bill was opposed by the Lords until the London mob demonstrated its seriousness by pulling down Hyde Park railings; and it is argued that the surrender of the Upper House showed their fear of their own lives. Now the ruling classes of that time were the masters of all the material forces in England, and could command them at will. Two thousand years ago the uprising of a mob would have been suppressed at all costs by the use of these material forces, and it would have been found that the classes identified with the rebels, instead of having their burdens lightened or their freedom widened, would have felt an extra turn of the screw which held them down. What made the difference ? The position in 1833 confronting the rulers of England was either to surrender the demand for Reform, or call out the military forces. The latter course involved consequences from which every man shrank in horror. The softening of character, the sense of responsibility to a higher Power, had undermined the power of selfishness, so that when the grim alternative came to be faced, the opposition to the people's wishes melted away. The party in power was rendered incapable of wielding its strength in its own interests by its own repugnance to suffering, misery, wrong, and degradation. The history of the social legislation of our times, which is recognised as progressive, is " simply a history of concessions demanded and obtained by that party which is through its position inherently the weaker from the party which as the holder of power is unmistakably stronger. There is no break in the series; no exception to the rule."

 I am sure you will immediately recognise the entire compatibility between the doctrines I have associated with the name of Kant and the movements of social reform in the past; and you will find it impossible to reconcile those movements with the teachings of the other school. In fact, so violently are the Utilitarian principles opposed to the forces of the movement, that even such men as Cobden and Bright, the leaders of the Manchester school in politics, rigorously and uncompromisingly resisted the factory legislation of the forties. The very apostles of Free trade bitterly opposed the amelioration of the conditions of labour; and for the same reasons as they advocated the opening of the ports. Free corn meant cheap labor; and graphic pictures of starving people touched the heart of England. But, the Factory Acts increased the cost of manufacture, and thus came to be strenuously opposed. The same voice which pleaded for the hungry multitude that it might be fed, cried out that the same well-fed multitude should be worked sixteen hours a day, should be put into the factories at nine years of age, and should be paid for its labor any price it could manage to get. But anything is grist that comes to the Utilitarian mill! There were other voices, however, which appealed to the heart of England, aroused her conscience, and stirred her to undertake the responsibility of lifting from the worker all but the necessary burdens of life. Not from any one section of the people did the response come to the needs of the time. Most of the leaders of the Radical Party in England have been members of the ruling class, men of gentle birth and breeding. Frederick Denison Maurice, Charles Kingsley, Thomas Arnold, Arnold Toynbee, the Earl of Shaftesbury, these men, foremost in the battle for reform, belonged to the educated and privileged classes. The lines of social and political cleavage have struck right through the strata of English society, leaving people of all ranks on either side. These men have been moved by no narrow ideal of enlightened selfishness, nor attracted by any pursuit of personal advantage. In all their writings, speeches, and acts there throbs the pulse of a strenuous devotion to duty, the warm glow of enlightened sympathy goes out towards their less fortunate fellow creatures, the spirit of noble sacrifice grows out of the sense of their responsibility to the Infinite God; and in their minds there always burned the inspiration of a confident hope that what they did might hasten the coming of the Kingdom of God. Little by little they have struck away the fetters that bound the people. Inch by inch they have widened the areas of freedom. Slowly, and persistently have they striven to endowment and equip the masses of their fellow men with those qualities which will enable them to maintain their freedom, and hold fast the liberty wherewith they have been made free.

 So much for the drift in modern society down to the present. The sketch has been slight, but enough to show the set of the current. You will not expect me to play the part of the prophet. But one or two things are sure. Having set in motion social forces, man loses control of them at once. They are under a law quite independent of human volition. Man becomes their servant, not their master. Thus, the tendencies already existing will continue. The concentric theories of Hume, Bentham, the Mills, and Herbert Spencer stand for permanent facts in life. I do not believe in their philosophies, which are one-sided, narrow, and materialistic. But the gigantic and intense struggle which has been identified with the principle of free competition in trade, but which may go on independently of that principle, is an indispensable factor in human progress. All other things being equal the most strenuous people, classes, races, will rise, while these who display lesser energy will fall in the descending order of their declining effort. If competition is a necessary spur to strenuousness, then without doubt the dominant future lies with the keenest competitors. One thing that emerges from the study of history is that progress is only possible amongst those people who are for ever attempting what lies just beyond their reach ; the attempt strengthens their vitalities, their success spurs them on to higher things. We may devise schemes which will appear to do away with the necessity for the struggle for existence; we may even succeed in so far lessening the necessity for that struggle as to obtain for ourselves comparative ease, and the achievements of the desired ends of life without travail and stress. But no deadlier blow could be struck at our stability than that. The doom of that race is sealed which refuses, for whatever reason, to continually and unremittingly put out the sum total of all its greatest capacities for the accomplishment of some task lying beyond its immediate realizations.

 That is only another way of saying that the meaning and goal of human life lie far beyond itself. During the Christian era there has been liberated into society a vast fund of force which is represented by the word "Duty." The " Ought;" the sanction, of this transcends the material and passing interests of mankind. The strident railing of Bentham, and all the protestations of the Mills, have vainly spent themselves against it. It still remains the supreme incentive to energy. As the years pass by it becomes more closely allied with sympathy, benevolence, and philanthropy. The sternness of the sense of duty is tempered by compassion and softened by the humane feelings. The drift in this direction is unmistakable, and its continuance is assured. A great philosopher has recently said that " truth is the net resultant of contending forces." One is hardly ready to accept such a definition without first submitting it to a searching investigation. As an indication of the probable lines of progress, or the social drift in the immediate future, it is probably not far wide of the mark. The war of contending interests is nowadays very much a thing of class and will probably become more so for a generation or so. The parties tend to sharper divisions, to more definite schemes of crystallization upon extreme principles. But, neither side will get its own way. 'When the critical battles of the campaign are fought, it is likely that the neutralising effect of the struggle will be seen, and the disintegrated forces gathered up in the sweep of those higher movements of feeling, of sympathy, of philanthropy, of justice, and of righteousness, which are becoming more and more the determinative factors of social life. Though every man and every class and community will be compelled to strenuous life, the conditions of the struggle will be such that the door of opportunity will never be barred against any, while every amelioration of needless hardship will bring into the conflict a zest and incentive that will make it a joy. The old world is young yet, and it is writing off the sins of its past. Its eye is bright with hope, beaming with tenderness, clear in the sense of complete reliance upon the Infinite and Eternal God.

Burrangong Argus (NSW : 1904) http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article247711006

THE ABORIGINES.

 There was lately published, in the proceedings of the Diocesan Assembly, an able paper on the state of the Aborigines, and the best means to be adopted for their preservation. On this subject Mr. RUSDEN is a good authority, as he has devoted much attention to it. We cannot, however, agree with him in every part of his proposed system, though, on the whole, it is an immense improvement upon any plan hitherto adopted.

The question is, can any of the aboriginal tribes, or their children, be civilised and if they can be, can they be altogether, or only partially ? It is most important that we should get correct information on this point, for otherwise our efforts would be sure to be misdirected. We will throw what light we can upon the subject, in the hope that it will assist in guiding in the right path those who take a kindly interest in the native population.

Can the adult natives be civilised ? To answer this question satisfactorily we should understand what, with regard to them, would be called a civilised state. If it means the implanting of Christianity, and the settled habits of their European brethren, we answer in the negative. This experiment has been tried most fully at Wellington Valley, in New South Wales. At the missionary establishment there neither money nor labour was spared to effect that desired object. There were gardens, cultivation fields, huts, schools; everything to interest and elevate and the whole under the zealous care of the Rev. Mr. THRELKELD. It was soon found that nothing could cure the wandering habits of the adults, but it was hoped that, by keeping the children at school, and separating them from their tribes, they, at least, would be rescued from the savage State. They made good progress in reading, and were well up in Scripture history and the principles of Christianity ; but as soon as they arrived at puberty nothing could keep them from returning to the free and wild life of their tribes, and, after a patient trial of some fifteen years, Mr. THRELKELD was obliged to write, with sorrow and regret, that the experiment was a total failure, and to recommend the abandonment of a scheme which brought as its fruits only expense and disappointment. We might also question the numberless instances in which native children have been brought up in the families of settlers, and treated in every respect as one of their own. In no instance has the original nature been overcome : they all had their fits of wandering, and nothing could stop them. It is unnecessary to accumulate evidence on this point. It is sufficient to say that wherever it has been tried the experiment has failed. Nor has the attempt to instil religious knowledge in their minds been attended with more satisfactory results : all is forgotten the moment they resume their wandering habits. We assert, therefore, that all attempts to civilise or evangelise the adult blacks must fail.

Can nothing, then, be done to ameliorate the condition of the native races, and save any remnant from the fate which is so rapidly overtaking them ? We think much may be done. We believe that if there was an establishment formed near some port — say Melbourne or Geelong —to which native children should, when practicable, be brought, so as to be entirely removed from intercourse with their parents, a permanent good would be done. In the case of pure-bred children, it would be necessary to obtain the consent not only of the parents, but of the tribe, for their removal to their new home, and to insist that they were not to attempt to take them away for a certain number of seasons. Presents should be given on the occasion, and the transaction made as impressive as possible. But in the case of the half-castes, we think more stringent measures might be adopted. Were there no other reason than the well known fact that a male half-caste child rarely is permitted to pass his tenth or twelfth year, we think Government is bound to rescue them from their almost certain fate. But, moreover, these children may be said to be abandoned by their white fathers, and on that ground the State may step in and act as their guardians. In some parts of the interior the half-caste children are numerous, and it is melancholy to reflect that such fine and intelligent lads should be doomed to an early death. As for the half-caste girls, they grow up to become the women of the neighbouring tribes, and ill-usage and exposure never fail to bring them to early graves. In the case of the half-castes, therefore, we would have the State step in and take these children away from an early age. We would have them placed in an asylum close to the sea. We would have the boys receive a fair education, and, in fact, have them brought up as the children of Christian parents. We would also bring them up for the sea, as a pursuit in which they will be more likely to do well than any other. Where they have been tried they make excellent sailors, and are remarkable for their acuteness of sight. A small vessel should be attached to the establishment, in which they should be exercised and taught their trade, and in due time they can be advantageously placed. In this way we should reclaim a number of beings and wear a valuable body of men; whose services to the colony would alone repay the cost and labour bestowed on them. They should be a garden attached to the building in which the boys might be made to work, as far as weeding and keeping it in order. But it would be futile to attempt to teach them agriculture, or indeed any ordinary trade as there would be little chance of their following them when thrown on their own hands. But the pursuit of the sea is more congenial to their nature, and there would be small chance of their abandoning it. For the girls, they should be also plainly educated, and brought up expressly for domestic service. They are very " neat-handed," attentive, cheerful, and teachable, and very kind to children. There could be the means of teaching them all the branches of domestic duties; and it is possible that by their sewing they might help to pay the expenses of the establishment. That, however, is a secondary consideration.

The fallacious part of Mr. RUSDEN'S plan is the proposal to have the children located in their own districts, where communication with their tribes would be easy, and indeed inevitable; and, being thus broken up into small bodies, it would be impossible to attend to their education, and remove them from the influences of those habits from which we would wean them. In fact we should fail, in part if not wholly, and our objects be defeated. To succeed, we must remove these children so far from their native haunts that their tribes would be unlikely to attempt to visit them ; or if they did so, it would be so rarely that very soon the children would forget their language, and lose all sympathy with them. That result is the great element of success in the plan we propose.

With respect to the black children, we should follow the same mode of education, according to sex, as we would with the half-castes. But their case is more difficult to manage than the latter. They cannot be taken away forcibly from their tribes; and if we accept the charge of them with conditions, those conditions must be observed. All that we can do when they are yielded to our care is to exact that they shall not be taken away before a certain number of years. The best chance for the children is, that by that time those who have a right to exercise a control over them will be dead, when our own authority may be still further extended. In no other way need we hope for any success and by the plan we suggest, we believe we should attain it, and thus save a remnant of a fast expiring people.

While upon the subject, we will touch briefly upon the causes of the rapid disappearance of the natives. Some years ago an idea prevailed that there was something mysterious in the causes which led to the disappearance of the savage tribes before the foot of the white man. Nothing, however, can be more natural than such a result. As soon as a district becomes settled, nearly all the young men of the tribes belonging to that tract of country attach themselves to the different stations. There they are regularly fed, and warmly clad, and they remain with the whites, perhaps, for two or three months. Then a number of their tribe passing, they must go and join them ; they throw off their clothes, and expose themselves to all the changes of weather they are sure to encounter. This brings on pulmonary disease, and consumption is one of the most frequent causes of death among the young men of the tribes. Among the women these causes do not operate so powerfully, as they are not so much exposed to sudden changes of habits. But their mode of life is fatal to the increase of their race. As a rule, the young girls rarely have more than one child, —numbers of them never bear children at all. This is chiefly to be attributed to the constant intercourse and connection kept up among themselves as well as the whites. Constant smoking and getting drunk on every occasion that offers itself, no doubt, assists to check their natural increase, but the first mentioned is the chief cause of their barrenness. And thus, while most of them die when still young, the numbers remaining to take their places are reduced more and more each year, till at last a unit will express the strength of a tribe which only a few years since may have consisted of many hundreds. And so they will continue to diminish, till not one of a kindly race remains, unless the State steps in to rescue them from total extinction.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic. 1857,http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article7132790