enjoy the humorous spectacle of politicians who urged the abolition of the House of Lords engaged in utilising the unwilling services of a handful of venerable senators, men whose names carry little weight anywhere, to defy the will of the Canadian people. Sooner or later, no doubt, the deadlock between the two Houses for which no provision is made in the Canadian Constitution will come to pass. But not for many years to come-not at any rate, in my judgment, until an era of evenly divided political opinion arrives in Canada.

3

It is continually asserted that Canadian public opinion is overwhelmingly in favour of the claims of the Irish Nationalists. In point of fact it would be found, if Canada could be consulted, that Ontario and the Maritime Provinces, and possibly Manitoba, would give a majority against handing over the Protestants of Ireland to a Parliament which would be run by a peasanthierarchy in league with the "Gombeen man," a Transatlantic variant of the Irish-born saloon-keeper, who is the curse of United States politics. The average clear-headed Canadian, who knows what governance in accordance with Irish ideas has meant for the United States, was not deceived by the lusty rhetoric of the political beggars who visited Canada not long ago in quest of contributions to the Nationalist war-chest. He would, no doubt, approve of the grant of Home Rule as part and parcel of a Federal system of local government. He himself has learned to suffer Quebec patiently, seeing clearly that the efflux of time has convinced the habitant-a cautious and law-abiding Norman and utterly unlike the Irish Celt that the French-Canadian Province, even if it were not "kraaled" in English-speaking communities, that separatism is an impossible policy. But the idea that any Home Rule Bill, which could possibly be accepted by the Nationalist leaders, would confine itself to granting provincial rights to Ireland is utterly absurd. It is a pity that those who talk so glibly of the French-Canadian precedent will not examine the British North America Act, which is Canada's written Constitution. Section 91 of chapter iv of the Act enumerates twenty-nine classes of subjects falling entirely within the exclusive legislative authority of the Dominion Parliament.

the

These include: the regulation of trade and commerce; raising of money by any mode or system of taxation, and the borrowing of money on the public credit; the postal service; militia, military, and naval service and defence; the salaries and allowances of civil and other officers of the Government of Canada; navigation and shipping; fisheries; marriage and divorce; criminal law, &c. &c. In chapter vii (to which Mr. Chamberlain in 1886 attached great importance) the appointment of judges rests with the Federal authority. Is it likely that Mr. Redmond, even the mitigated leader of to-day, would accept the Quebec solution?

E.B.O.

AUSTRALIAN AFFAIRS

As one surveys the political history of Australia during 1911, two lines of movement become clear. Along the one line Australians are making steady, if slow, progress towards a rationa and active Imperialism. In their course along the other they are defining beyond the possibility of mistake what they expect of their Governments, and are more particularly settling the conditions on which Labour Ministries will be kept in office by the sympathetic vote. It is, one hopes, well understood in England that no Australian Labour Government (with one possible exception) rules by virtue of a majority of Labour voters. I make an exception in favour of the new Western Australian Government, because we of the eastern States know too little of that distant community (practically as far away from us as New Zealand is) to make definite pronouncements about its internal politics; but there is reason to believe that Western Australians imitated their fellows further eastwards in voting to expel the Ministry they had rather than to instal the Ministry they now have. East of the Bight, at any rate, the situation is clear. Mr. Fisher, Mr. McGowen and Mr. Verran all depend on the non-Labour votes recorded for their supporters; and, if they are wise, they will have discovered by now what they must do, and not do, to remain in office.

Put shortly, the conditions are these. They must be active, and they must not be partisan. There were in 1910 certain

measures, legislative and administrative, which Australians wanted-those connected with defence more especially, among which in the minds of most Australians the land-tax is counted, both as encouraging the growth of population and as providing funds for the new land and sea forces. There were a few others to which not many Australians objected-e.g. the Banknotes and Banking Bills; there was no violent agitation for them, but the average voter was not much enamoured of the banks, and was quite willing to give the Federal Government a free hand with them. So long as he got the measures he wanted passed, not merely talked about, and passed in the form in which he wanted them—a land force under training for seven "adult" years, not two, a squadron built from revenue, and so on-he was willing to accept measures of the second class also. But proposals which he felt to be conceived mainly in the interests of a single class he rejected when the chance was given him; and administrative acts of the same character he has resented as audibly as possible-the one act, for instance, of the Fisher Government during the recent session which has really shaken its security is the decision to give absolute preference to unionists throughout the ranks of Government employees. The partisan press, of course, has many other complaints; but that is the only one which has made the nonLabour electors at large seriously consider their position.

The Referendum vote, to which I referred a few lines back, deserves a paragraph to itself. Looking back at it, one sees more clearly than ever that it was rejected because of its partisan implications. The crying need for some instrument by which the "new protection" could be made operative was silenced by the clamour of those who argued-not all of them in opposition to the proposals-that Labour as Labour would thus obtain control of all the Commonwealth's industries. That was the main cause of the Government's defeat. One of the effects was prophesied in these columns last May. "The Socialists," I wrote then," will easily gain over Labour's left wing to a policy of general strikes," and Sydney and Brisbane, more disturbed than for many years past, have proved the forecast correct. That only the left wing has been gained over is shown by the firm attitude of the McGowen Ministry to the Sydney strikers. But another result is of more permanent importance. One object of

the referenda was to make the Federal Arbitration Court supreme throughout the Commonwealth in industrial jurisdiction. What the voters refused (perhaps of set purpose, perhaps incidentally) last April the Federal Government now hopes to attain by another route. Employees have hitherto been usually organised in industries. The award for the bootmakers, for instance, has fixed wages for all the different processes by which boots are made, and tach State possessing an arbitration system has worked under its own award, the Federal Court having power only over industries such as the shipping industry, in which an employee might be called upon to work in more than one State. The new proposal is to organise the employees in crafts. The engineer in a woollen factory will be classed, not as a woollen factory employee, but as an engineer along with other engineers from smelting works and sugar refineries and so forth; and the court which finally determines the conditions of his employment will thus be the Federal Court-since his craft is co-extensive with the Commonwealth— not the Court of the State in which his factory is situated. This does not, of course, mean that engineers' wages will be uniform throughout Australia; but their wages in Queensland will be determined by a Court which must take into consideration the Wages of engineers in other States, and which will endeavour so to adjust the scale of wages that the conditions of their life shall be as far as possible equalised in all the States.

To return to the general discussion. In 1910 the electors of the Commonwealth and of two States were confronted by Ministries of a non-Labour character, two of them suspect as avowed Fusions, which had been talking for some time about measures the country desired, but which had either refrained from action or acted half-heartedly. For Messrs. Deakin, Wade, and Peake they therefore substituted Messrs. Fisher, McGowen, and Verran. For the last year and a half they have been wondering whether it was worth while. And their conclusions seem to have been dictated by the considerations set forth earlier in this letter. The Fisher Ministry has been active in direct defence measures, and is doing its best to strengthen the weak points of the experimental legislation by which compulsory training is enforced. It has passed the desired land-tax, and experience is showing that some of the consequent hardships which seemed at

first inevitable can be alleviated by decisions of the High Cour It has taken over the Northern Territory, and is very proper investigating the difficult and hitherto unattempted problem its occupation: press outcries about the slowness of the proces by the by, are inspired mainly by private or partisan motiv (well understood by Australians) and should be heavily discounte Its general immigration policy is lacking in activity; but t public knows how much of this is due to State jealousies, th Commonwealth being powerless apart from State co-operatio On the whole, then, the Fisher Ministry has been actuated b Australian, rather than by Labour, interests; and on the whole retains the confidence of the people.

Of the McGowen Ministry in New South Wales the san may be said with deductions. It has put the State's finances on new and a sound basis, separating the business transactions (rai way, harbour and water-supply administration) from those mo purely governmental, allotting business profits for business pu poses, and using the total receipts from sales of Crown lan --which are obviously capital-as capital wherewith to carry ou permanent public works. Its educational policy is equall

acceptable; at the University it has founded three new chairsof Political Economy (the first in Australia), Botany, and Applie Chemistry-and it is establishing a system of continuatio schools, industrial (including agricultural), commercial, an domestic, which will eventually ensure that every youth in th State shall, between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, receiv instruction in the work in which he or she is, or is to be, engaged In half a dozen minor matters Mr. McGowen is acting as M Wade's supporters would have been glad to see that gentlema act. On the other hand, when an attempt was made by th Labour Minister for Lands to substitute leasehold for freehol tenure in the disposal of Crown lands, the storm of public di approval drove the Minister from office and caused the policy t be dropped at once. That matter being settled, the Ministr has been able to retain office, handle a serious strike with jud ment, and pass several important Bills; nor is there any sig at present that public opinion desires a change.

In South Australia, on the other hand, the Labour Ministr seems to be doomed. The personal element has something to d