country, and autocratic in place of parliamentary methods of government would in some parts have to be adopted. The racial trouble in the United States indicates that prevention is the only course to pursue in view of an evil which is apparently without remedy. The widespread impression that white men cannot perform manual labour in the tropical regions of Australia is without adequate foundation; it is continually refuted by actual experience. The difficulty is not that the white man cannot work alongside of the black, but that he will not. Professor C. H. Pearson, in 'National Life and Character,' remarks: 'When he' (the black labourer) 'multiplies, the British race begins to consider labour of all but the highest kinds dishonourable, and from the moment that a white population will not work in the fields, on the roads, in the mines or in factories, its doom is practically sealed.'
It is doubtful whether there is so much real economy in coloured labour as some imagine. It is undoubtedly more manageable and docile, and these features naturally have a charm for employers; but docility is not the quality on which the greatness of the British race was based. It was not the docility of our forefathers that won for us our civic and political liberty; nor were the sea-dogs who built the Empire renowned for passive virtues, which are as little calculated to maintain as to found an Empire. In the eagerness to unearth treasure we must beware lest we sap the very foundations of the Imperial structure. Rome, the prototype of Great Britain, fell because the sturdy agriculturists, racy of the soil, were displaced by bond labour; for though the latter might till the land with profit to their masters, they could not wield the sword necessary to defend the homestead.
There is nothing either strange or novel in the ideal held by the Australian democracy that the worker should enjoy a living wage, that he should have leisure for recreation and self-improvement, and that some provision should be. made by which he is enabled to
