The opportunity will almost certainly arrive before long. The clever gamester is he who recognises the chance when it appears and makes the most of it. You must have a certain amount of patience. It is ruinous to be too precipitate, but it will almost certainly happen, and probably before the end of your first triennial term, that the Premier will come down with certain proposals to which you are not committed before the eyes of your constituents, and which are intrinsically important enough to arouse popular feeling. This is the opportunity to break with the Government. But as you represent a government constituency you must be careful. You must go to the electors and take them into your confidence; you must explain that after a tremendous and heart-breaking struggle between devotion to a political leader and devotion to principle, the latter carried the day. It is well to point out—as truthfully you may do—that your threats, tears, and entreaties have been fruitless to turn the Premier from his fell purpose; that your expostulations have fallen on deaf ears. Henceforth, you may add, all personal attachments, all private longings, all political amenities, are to you as nought; all the friendships of a lifetime have been laid on the altar; for the future you live only in the endeavour humbly but unswervingly to give effect to those eternal principles in comparison with the majesty of which, the life and aspirations of the individual are as the small dust in the balance, are a not worth naming sacrifice.
Once in opposition it will be found that your sphere has extended, your reputation increased. It is now possible to marshal all your forces. Allusions can be made that would previously have been inadmissible; words can be used that before would have been treason. At this period of the game it is advisable to cultivate a method, a manner of your own. It is desirable to be in some way distinctive. There is much virtue in a particular look, in a mode of speech, in a mannerism. If you have not the main thing, which is natural ability and power of carrying conviction, it is possible to get something else—something that will focus the attention of the spectators in the outer ring. Every one knows the story of the man who laughed. He has had his counterpart, and a very successful counterpart, in Australian politics. It will be recorded of one man of obscure beginnings that he was a genial, capable, extremely popular person, who laughed, and became Premier of Victoria. If laughing is not your metier, if it goes against the grain, it is just as effective, or even more so, to cultivate a cast-iron demeanour. The “cool, calm, strong man” has been played admirably on several occasions, by none more finely and successfully than by Mr W. H. Irvine, of Victoria. Yet another pose that will often be found extremely useful is that of the bluff devil-take-you kind of individual, as impersonated by Mr Thomas Bent, of contemporary fame, and by Sir George Dibbs, of happy memory. The astute Cornwall in King Lear says some words to the effect that this kind of knave—the bluff, outspoken knave—has more craft than any other kind that could be mentioned. However that may be, the gruffly candid demeanour has proved useful in Australian politics in the past, and is likely to prove useful again. Then there is the humorous pose, of which Mr G. H. Reid furnishes the best living example. This is invaluable at times, but its successful adoption is so difficult that it cannot be generally recommended. Only the highest kind of ability should venture to undertake this manner. It may be of advantage to affect a plain, or even a dowdy, appearance. The first Federal Treasurer wore an old suit of brown clothes for a lengthy period, and with conspicuously good results. But, whatever you cultivate, whether it is the manner of the sage or the buffoon, of the circus or of the graveyard, it is necessary to cultivate something, and to cultivate it well.
With a modicum of good luck, and a sufficiency of good management, almost any one can rise to Ministerial rank in Australia, or for that matter can obtain the highest post of vantage, namely the Premiership. The comparative shade of private membership is no sooner left behind than the game takes on still different phases. The cards are reshuffled, the partners are altered, the rules are revised. The play is as fascinating as ever—even more so—but it has become much more difficult, much more complex. One has only to reflect for a moment on the absence of any really live question in colonial politics to understand the trouble that the head of a Government must have to keep up some semblance of enthusiasm in the country, and to retain his place. There is no large Imperial question. There is no Home Rule question. There is no longer a tariff question, although there are occasional murmurings and mutterings from one or two sections of the people, and from one or two dissatisfied newspapers. It is impossible to beat up a party, either in the State or the Federal Parliament, on such lines as Imperialism, Nationalism, Jingoism, Fiscalism, Conservatism, or any other “ism” belonging to the larger domain of national affairs. What is there left to fight about? There is very little. In three cases out of four the incoming Government takes up the measures of its predecessor. In three cases out of four the differences, other than the personal ones, are barely discernible. In this political atmosphere of Australia, Amurath with Amurath is eternally being confounded.
The rise of the Labour Party has been the most remarkable feature of the situation during the past three or four years, and the whole history of the Labour Party is the most conspicuous illustration of the general truth of what has just been said. In Opposition it has been magnificently strong and war-like. It has talked, through its leaders and its units, firmly and finely of the necessity of checkmating capitalistic greed, of nationalising industries, of abolishing the large land-owner, of setting up a State Bank, of establishing a State iron industry, of taxing the wealthy for the benefit of the poor, of granting pensions to the aged workers, of saving the weak from the strong, of improving industrial conditions, of giving every man a fair return for his labour, of shortening hours, of widening the avenues of employment, of adding something material and tangible to the pleasures of the people. The Labour Party out of office has talked impressively of all these things—so impressively, indeed, that it has been taken at its word. During the last year or two, Labour Ministries have been in power in the Federal Parliament, in Queensland, and in Western Australia. What has happened? Where is the monopoly that has been nationalised? Where are the wages that have been increased? Where is the Bank that has been established? Where is the land tax that was promised? Where are the old age pensions in Queensland, in Western Australia or in the Federal Parliament? More than this: where are the records of any serious attempt on the part of one of the Labour Ministries of Australia to nationalise even one industry, to check capitalisation, to pay old age pensions, to run a State Bank, or to do anything that the average Liberal, or even the so-called Conservative Opposition would not cheerfully undertake? Not only has there been nothing revolutionary accomplished, but nothing revolutionary has been even tried.
To keep your place at the inner table, to be able for any length of time to set the pace for the rest of the numerous company, it is necessary to remember that the other players, and not yourself, are the actual masters of the situation. By proceeding warily, and by showing a thorough knowledge of every unwritten rule and precept, you may get as much as a reasonable man should require. You may have the appearance, if not the substance of power, and all the honours, emoluments, lime-light and other accessories connected with it. But to attempt to run a crusade of your own, or to attempt to put into practice the sentiments you preached in opposition, is merely to commit hari-kari, to rush on your own doom. The Labour Party, or the more intelligent members of it, have found this out. My own opinion is that the Labour leader is a trifle less insincere on the whole, than the average leader of any other party or section. Yet the difference between the fighting Labourist’s word in opposition and his performance in office is great and ghastly. It is not necessary to blame him. He has simply had to realise that Australia is in a condition, politically speaking, of being willing to listen to everything, and of being able to accomplish nothing. It is always talking about its breathless speed, and perpetually falling down in the mud.
Undoubtedly the most humorous, the most delightful, and at the same time the most useful institution known to the continent is the Upper House, or Legislative Council. What the Premier of the day would do without this stand-by, it is barely possible to surmise. To the head of an allegedly Radical government, the Tory Chamber is always a God-send. Even the cleverest tactician finds now and again that he must press forward when in office with measures that he advocated when sitting on the left hand benches. It is an awkward predicament for many reasons. He knows that if the reform is carried, it will probably bring about a reaction, and that he himself will almost certainly be hurled from office at the next election. Yet he dare not jettison the principal plank in his fighting platform. What is he to do? Amid the storm clouds that are all round him, out of the night that encompasses him, above the tempest that is driving him irresistibly forward there gleams one ray of light—the light of the Legislative Council. There it is, straight ahead, standing between himself and swift and sudden extinction. Confidently he presses on. His vessel triumphantly breasts the waves of the Representative House, and is dashed to pieces on the adamantine rock of the Council’s inaccessibility. But he himself is safe. He gains breathing time while the fragments of his craft are being pieced together again. His constituents are satisfied. He comes back stronger than ever from the next election, and goes through the performance again.
Will any one deny that all these possibilities, all these variations, all these moves and countermoves, all these chances of success, all these risks of failure, go to make the pursuit of the political prize in Australia one of the most absorbing in which man can engage? The governing fact as already stated is that the game is not confined to a privileged class, as is practically the case in England. Subject to certain conditions, it is open to all. It is true that the possessor of a banking account has an advantage. In the language of pedestrianism, he beats the pistol; he gets a certain start every time. But the start is not so great that it cannot by a display of agility be overtaken. And the fact remains that the chief attraction of Australia from the player’s point of view, and one of the chief risks from the point of view of the spectator, is that political competitions are conducted actually, as well as nominally, irrespective of wealth, or rank, or status in life.
It is hardly profitable to indulge in generalisation as to the kind of ability that is needed for success in public life. A certain kind of man flourishes, and another kind—the opposite kind—is seen to fall; but in a year or two the positions are reversed, and the set of qualities which seemingly commanded success are those which invite or compel failure. Therefore the generalising process is for the most part vain. But if one were asked to name the attribute that is most useful to an Australian politician—the attribute that it is ruinous to be without—one might be tempted to mention knowledge of human nature. The phrase implies a great deal. It implies such characteristics as tact, foresight, and sense of the fitness of things; power of being genial, or of seeming to be genial; knowledge of when to strike, and when to refrain from striking. It means the capacity to put yourself in the place of those for whom you are legislating, to whom you are appealing. It suggests in the possessor a degree of intellect, combined with a degree of sensibility. It is the opposite of narrowness, of bigotry, of fanaticism, and of folly of the more glaring kind.
A second quality to be considered eminently desirable is that of accessibility. In the vernacular this is usually called “absence of frill.” It is an asset well-nigh indispensable for any successful public man in Australia, though it must not be confounded—as it sometimes is—with lack of dignity. Most of the leaders of ministries and heads of parties that I have met in Australia have been, and are, extremely dignified; and, as a rule, the most dignified have been the most accessible. It is not the kind of dignity that surrounds itself with much outward pomp and ornament; not the kind that emulates Mr Forcible Feeble, and proclaims its existence as loudly as possible, for fear that it should be overlooked. It is the dignity that results from mental processes not visible to the eye of the vulgar. It can unbend, jest, laugh, look stern, wear the mask of folly or any other mask, because it is sure of itself. The fortifications of reserve, and the serried front of isolation, utilised by the typical English Prime Minister, are not wanted in Australia. Here the obscure unit and the political chief meet on equal social terms, to the advantage not merely of the one, but of the other as well.
A third qualification which may be mentioned as very desirable, if not as absolutely necessary, has been already alluded to as the gift of speech. To accomplish much in public life in Australia, it is necessary to talk, and to talk a great deal. Whether it is on a platform or in the open air; whether it is within the walls of Parliament or outside them, you must, if you desire to become well known, tell the public something, and keep on telling it to them. The Australians are quick, impressionable, receptive-minded. Their highest awards are given, in nine cases out of ten, to the man who can appeal to them in the most direct, the most personal, and the most intelligible way.