have read history to better purpose, and are satisfied that the industrial lead was attained by means of the most stringent system of patents, monopolies, and protection that the world has ever witnessed. It is in the temporary and now baneful effervescence of a system of free imports, not in the fiscal policy of the self-governing Colonies, that the departure from true British instinct is to be traced.
The germ of all that appears in Australian life is to be found in the Mother-land, and so-called Australian tendencies are merely accentuations of inherited proclivities. These may readily be traced in many directions. The oft-noted preponderance of population in Australian capitals is but a strenuous reflex of English city crowding. Undesirable as this movement appears, its university indicates it as an unavoidable state in the evolution of social solidarity. The deplorable diminution of the birth-rate in Australia is only an exaggeration of British example. The extension of the sphere of State activity, which is denounced as State Socialism, is the hardly more pronounced expression of a tendency which is apparent everywhere in the United Kingdom under the name of Municipalization. Australian Governments were driven by stress of circumstances to undertake many functions previously performed by private enterprise; it must not, however, be supposed that socialistic theory played any considerable part in their adoption. The measures indicated were devised by practical men to meet everyday requirements, and were not the outcome of any theoretical preconceptions.
The Australian Colonies obtained their autonomy at a time when the tide of laissez-faire dogma ran high. The adventurous settlers who planted the British flag in these distant lands were familiar with the predictions of dire calamity uttered by orthodox economists against those who ventured to transgress the narrow circle within which the legitimate functions of the State were supposed to be circumscribed. They were sturdy indi-
