MR. TROLLOPE'S AUSTRALASIA.* [SECOND NOTICE.]

MR. TROLLOPE gives on the whole a favourable view of education in Australasia, though he seems to think too much is done by the State in that matter, and holds a strong opinion that in education, as indeed in all things whatsoever, the less that is done for a people by their Government the better. How education could be provided throughout great part of Australia without the action of the State, it is difficult to imagine. Even with the action of the State there are, it is said, symptoms now and then of a swarm of white savages rising in the depths of the bush. " The traveller," says Mr. Trollope, " will often hear complaints, especially from squatters, of the wild, untaught savagery of ' bush children,'— that is, of the children of free-selectors, cockatoos, and small farmers." But in Victoria, with a population of only three- quarters of a million, the public schools cost altogether £238,980, of which £149,328 are paid from the public revenue ; in New South Wales, they cost £191,599, of which the Government con- tributes £142,000 ; and in the other Colonies, education is sustained on somewhat the same scale. In all of these, except Victoria, the State appears to make wise use of the immense aid that can always be given, especially in a new country, by the religious combinations to the spread of education. In Victoria, at the moment of the Ministerial crisis in which Sir Charles Govan Duffy lost office, the Catholic Bishop of Melbourne issued a Pastoral much in the same strain as the Resolutions of the Irish Catholic Bishops on Mr. Gladstone's Mall University Bill, and with much the same effect. The immediate result at Melbourne was the passing of a sweeping Secularist Education Bill by large majorities, as the immediate result here has been the easy triumph of Mr. Fawcett,—the im- mediate result in each case, we say, by no means regarding it as the ultimate result. But in each case, there is a valuable practical lesson involved as to the necessity of prudence, a calm spirit, and a sparing use of adjectives and adverbs, in dealing with affairs of • Australia and New Zealand. By Anthony Trollope. London: Chapman and Hall.

which the solution can only be attained by sound counsel and political means,—for passion provokes passion, and the passion of a mob is sure for the time at least to triumph over the passion of a synod, to the grievous injury for the time, be it long or short.

of the interests which the synod has most sincerely at heart. The University of Sydney greatly interested Mr. Trollope. There is indeed, he says, " no institution in the colonies, which excites and deserves the sympathies of an English traveller more completely." It is a teaching, but not a residential University, and has an ex- cellent staff of Professors. There are, however, affiliated Colleges, in which it is proposed that students from a distance shall live. "Two of these," Mr. Trollope says,—

" Have been already built, and are inhabited by the Warden of St. Paul's, which is a Protestant establishment, and by the Rector of St. John's, which is intended for the Roman Catholics. Those gentle- men's salaries of £.500 each are paid out of the taxes; but the affiliated students have not yet come in large numbers. When I visited the University, the happy Rector of St. John's was troubled with, I think. but one inmate, whereas the Warden of St. Paul's had three or four. I am very far, however, from intending to sneer at the Sydney University. Amidst a population so sparse, it was found necessary that the beginning, if made at all, should be made by the Government, and paid for with Government money. It has not yet had time for success."

In 1870, there were 41 scholars on the books of the Sydney Uni- versity—in the same year 122 students in all attended lectures at Melbourne—" a number which,"' says Mr. Trollope, " is poor for a University with a Chancellor, a Vice-Chancellor, a senate, four professors, and nine other lecturers." Here, as in other places, we must say we think Mr. Trollope is rather unfair to Vic- toria. The number is not poor, considering the circumstances.

The University of Melbourne is hardly twenty years old. The population of Victoria is only three-quarters of a million. Many of the rich men of the colony can afford to send, and do send, their sons to be educated at Oxford and Cambridge. The bulk of the population of the colony are hard-working, enterprising men, who may be supposed not to see the advantage of higher culture for their sons in a country so much of which has yet to be tamed from a state of nature to the service of men. Under all the cir- cumstances, the proportion of University students in Victoria is about what might be expected.

The standard of Parliamentary capacity and merit in Australia is not, according to Mr. Trollope, a very high standard. The utmost he can say for it is that no Australian need be ashamed "to compare the tone and tactics of the Houses at Sydney, Mel- bourne, and Adelaide with those of Harrisburg and Albany."

But he adds, "in neither land,—in Australia nor the United States, —has time yet been allowed for the creation of a class of men capable of bearing Parliamentary honours with that habitual serenity which is essential to absolute fitness." We fear it may be a very long time indeed before " habitual serenity" may come to be regarded as the normal temper of the American or Australian legislator. Unfortunately, the standard seems doomed rather to deteriorate than to improve. It is hardly the mere glamour of historical retrospection that makes us feel that General Washington, his colleagues in war and government, and his Congress, were

superior persons to the vast multitude of their successors. In that time, probably an American gentleman whose culture was refined and whose sense of honour was high, would have had a rather

better chance of being elected to the House of Representatives than, as it is often complained, he would now have. The politics of America tend to fall more and more into the hands of lawyers, and unfortunately of lawyers who have not succeeded in the practice of the law. We infer from the tone of the more remarkable debates which we have had the opportunity of watching during the last eight or ten years, and from the way in which intercolonial negotiations are sometimes conducted, that the politics of Australia are falling more and more into the hands of successful shopkeepers. Whether the successful shopkeeper or the unsuccessful attorney is the better fitted by nature and art for the grand task of government, and especially for establishing the foundations of great and free nations in new worlds, is a problem which will, no doubt, arduously exercise the critical faculty of the De Tocqueville of the twentieth century, when he compares the history of American with that of Australian demo- cracy. In Australia there seems to be at present a distinct and rapid though, we hope, only a temporary deterioration of type. The assemblies in which Mr. Lowe and Mr. Childers trained the talents which so soon brought them to the front rank in Imperial politics have, we fear, not been, to say the least of it, surpassed by their successors. Mr. Trollope ascribes deterioration in Victoria to payment of members :-

" Tho Members of each House," he says, "are paid £300 a year for their services, so that any Victorian blacksmith, gardener, or shepherd

may, with seeming security, leave his business, if he can get himself elected into Parliament. This very fact, that a living is so to be made, is favourable to the cause of the blacksmiths, gardeners, and shepherds. It is but reasonable to a working-man that he should give a vote towards getting a living for another working man; but it cannot be for the welfare of the colony that one class of men sholild be deterred from Parliament., and another set brought into Parliament, from such motives."

The conclusion is just, but it surely cannot be true that any black- smith, or gardener, or shepherd has been elected to the Victorian Parliament, and for such motives. That Assembly contains some singularly unpleasant persons, no doubt, but has our own House of Commons ever been without a few individuals whose presence there was as curious as the fly in amber? On the other hand, we have read debates in the Victorian Parliament in which a majority of the speeches would do no discredit to Westminster. At present, there is as little sign of Australian Parliaments being swamped by the working-classes as of their being dominated by the squatters. It is rather the growth of the mere bourgeois spirit in their Governments that we apprehend,—the bickering, over- reaching, insolent, and uncandid spirit which is characteristic of that class as a class. This spirit seldom happily prevails for long in the government of states, and fortunately, for it is a spirit alike hostile to the principles of honour and liberty. But while it prevails, it is to be apprehended that Australian politics will tend to shabbiness, as American politics tend to sharp practice.

The New Zealand Parliament impressed Mr. Trollope as much higher in point of tone than any of the Australian Legislatures.

At Wellington he testifies that he heard no word to which any Speaker of a House could take exception, and this, moreover, while hard things were being said by members one of another. He complains, however, that the New Zealand legislators are far too much addicted to quotations from papers and reference to their notes, and doubts whether Demosthenes or Cicero were so addicted.

It may be that the habit of referring to notes in some degree restrains the exuberant tendency to personality which is rather characteristic of new legislatures, and if so, it may be tolerated for a time with advantage, as a kind of rhetorical swimming-belt. The standard of manners is also probably higher in New Zealand, from the conditions of its original settlement. Mr. Trollope does not extend the admiration which he feels for its legislators to the remarkable Jewish statesman, Mr. Vogel, who for several years has been the principal figure in its political life, and whose ambi- tious and adventurous policy, however it may ultimately result, has hitherto certainly appeared to contribute considerably to the advancement of the colony. Mr. Trollope met with those who regarded Mr. Vogel as a prophet and with those who regarded him as a quack, and he evidently leans himself to the latter belief. But it is to our mind much more than probable that Mr. Vogel's policy, which seems to be staking the credit of New Zealand in order to import population and make roads, is the policy by which colonies succeed nowadays, and indeed have always succeeded. Victoria has lately abandoned the policy of assisting emigration, while every other Australian colony, and indeed every other territory in the world fit for colonisation and having a provident government, is eagerly com- peting in the labour market. For all her gold, Victoria may dis- cover that the period of her development will have been considerably retarded by this self-sufficient policy ; and that the ancient supremacy of New South Wales, strong in coal, if not so strong in gold, may be revindicated in other than diplomatic successes. How far it may be due to Mr. Vogel's certainly somewhat start- ling policy of enterprise, how far to the energy and judgment with which he has been represented in London, it is difficult to tell ; but in all Australasia there is certainly no colony which at the moment seems to hold its own, and to advance so steadily and with so little of that wild propensity to " blow," of which Mr.

Trollope so sadly complains, as New Zealand.