Another fine athlete and good fellow is Frank Slavin, the prize-fighter. I have acknowledged a hundred times that I belong to a lost cause. My sympathies are with the old exploded prize-ring. Righdy or wrongly, I trace the growth of crimes of violence to the abolition of that glorious institution. I want to see it back again, with its rules of fair-play, and for its contempt for pain and its excellent tuition in temper and forbearance. I am an enthusiast, and being almost alone, am therefore the more enthusiastic. But I grew tired of the wild exultation in Slavin's prowess, the mad rejoicing over a victory which meant less than it would have done in the days which I am old enough to remember. In Australia better be an athlete than almost anything, except perhaps a millionaire.
Take the average native and ask him what he knows of Marcus Clarke, of James Brunton Stevens, of Harpur, Kendal, or the original of Browning's Waring. He will have no response for you, but he will reel off for you the names of the best bowler, the best bat, the champion forward, the cunningest of half-backs. The portraits of football players are published by the dozen and the score, and the native knows the names and achievements of every man thus signalled out for honour. In England the schoolboys would know all about these people, but in Australia the world at large is interested. The bank clerk who has a recognised position in a football team enjoys professional privileges which another may not claim. His athletic prowess reflects upon him in his business. His manager allows him holidays for his matches, and is considerate with him with regard to hours for training.
From all this one would naturally argue the existence of a specially athletic people, but the conclusion is largely illusory. The worship of athleticism breeds a professional or semi-professional class, but it is surprising to know how little an effect it has upon the crowd of city people who join in all the rites of adoration. The popularity of the game is answerable for the existence of the barracker whose outward manifestations of the inward man are as disagreeable as they well can be. The barracker is the man who shouts for his own party, and by yells of scorn and expletives of execration seeks to daunt the side against which he has put his money or his partisan aspirations. When he gathers in his thousands, as he does at all matches of importance, he is surprisingly objectionable. He is fluent in oath and objurgation, cursing like an inmate of the pit. This same man is orderly enough at a race meeting and takes his pleasure mildly there.
The barracker and the larrikin are akin. The gamin of Paris, grown up to early manhood, fed on three meat meals a day, supplied with plenteous pocket money, and allowed to rule a tribe of tailors, would be a larrikin. The New York hoodlum is a larrikin with a difference. The British rough is a larrikin also with a difference. The Australian representative of the great blackguard tribe is better dressed, better fed and more liberally provided in all respects than his confrere of other nations. He is the street bully, par excellence, inspired to this tyranny by unfailing beef and beer. When Mr Bumble heard of Oliver Twist's resistance to the combined authority of Mrs Sowerberry and Charlotte and Noah Claypole, he repudiated the idea of madness which was offered as an explanation of the boy's conduct. “It isn't madness, ma'am,” said Mr Bumble, “it's meat.”
There is the true explanation of the larrikin. He is meat-fed and is thereby inspired with ferocity, Darwin, if I remember righdy, tells of a sheep which was gradually accustomed to a flesh diet. Its wool began to take the coarseness of hair and the mild beast grew savage. The fore-runners of the larrikin were never very sheep-like in all probability, for if one could trace his pedigree, it would in most cases be found that he is the descendant of the true British cad. But he has improved upon the ancestral pattern and become a pest of formidable characteristics and dimensions. The problem he presents has never been faced, but it will have to be met in one way or another before long. The stranger is forced to the conclusion that magistrates are absurdly lenient. I recall a case of some few months ago where a gang of well-fed ruffians assaulted an old man in Flinders Street, Melbourne. The attack was shown to have been utterly unprovoked, and the victim's injuries were serious. Three of the most active participators in the sport were seized by the police and were each sent to prison for six weeks, A sentence of six months, with a brace of sound floggings thrown in, would have gone nearer to meet the exigencies of the case; but there is a widespread objection to the use of the cat, the argument being that it is wrong to brutalise these refined young men by its application. The same spirit of false sentiment exists in England, but in a less marked degree.
Crimes of violence are of exceptionally frequent occurrence and it is still felt necessary to punish rape by the imposition of the final penalty.
The democracy is determined to test itself completely and female suffrage seems to be within measurable distance. It is conceivable that it may have a refining effect, and that it may act as a curative, though the experiment is full of risk. The one-man one-vote principle, together with the payment of members of the legislative chambers, has not, so far, achieved the happiest conceivable results. The parliament of New South Wales is occasionally notorious as a bear-garden. The late Mr MacEhlone (who once informed the Speaker that, when he encountered outside an honourable gentleman, to whom the ruling of the chair compelled him to apologise, he would “spit in his eye “) has a worthy successor in the presence of a Mr Crick. Sometime ago Mr Crick was expelled by an indignant house, wearied of his prolonged indecencies of demeanour, but his constituency sent him back untamed and rejoicing—his mission being to prove that the Ministry was composed of thieves and liars. The miserable charges dwindled into nothing; but one at least of his constituents is persuaded that the debates, as printed in the newspapers, would lose so much of sparkle if Mr Crick were banished permanendy from the house that the breakfast enjoyment of the public more than atoned for his presence there. The women are notoriously deficient in humour, and it is possible that, when they come to vote, the reign of Mr Crick and his like will be over.
The best hope which lies before Australia at this hour is the federation of her several colonies. Her determination to keep her population European can hardly fail of approval, but the immediate work to her hand is to consolidate her own possessions. The attempt to find material for six separate parliaments in a population of three and a half millions has, it must be confessed in all candour, succeeded beyond reasonable expectations, but concentration will be of service. There will be a laudable rivalry between the colonies which will result in the choice of the fittest men, and a combination parliament will be a more useful and dignified body than has yet been assembled within colonial limits. But this is one of the smallest of the results to be anticipated. The ridiculous tariff restrictions which now harass individuals and restrict commerce will pass away and with them the foolish hatreds which exist between the rival colonies. At present if one desire to anger a Victorian he has only to praise New South Wales. Would he wound a Sydneyite in the fifth rib, let him laud Melbourne. There is a dispute pending about the proprietorship of the Murray River. It lies between the two colonies and New South Wales claims it to the Victorian bank. When it overflowed disastrously a couple of years ago, an irate farmer on the Victorian side is said to have written to Sir Henry Parkes, bidding him come and pump the confounded river off his land, and threatening to agitate for a duty (by the gallon) on imported New South Wales water. The dispute is nothing less than childish, but I have the personal assurance of the leading statesman of New South Wales that he is perfectly satisfied with the position. It is probable that he sees in the existing riparian rights a chance for a concession which may win concessions in its turn. The Victorians are imminently dissatisfied and would seem to have a right to be so. Federation is on all accounts to be desired, but it has yet to be fought for, and will only be gained with difficulty. Wise men long for it, but the petty jealousies of rival states will hold it back from its birth-time as long as delay is possible. How infinitesimally small these jealousies are nothing short of a residence in the land can teach anybody. Wisdom will have its way in the long run, but the belief of the veteran leader of New South Wales, that he will live to see the union of the Australian colonies, is a dream. It is a dream which only his political enemies will grudge him.
The wide and varied resources of the country, and the ups and downs which men experience, breed a merciless courage which in some of its manifestations is very fine. During my first stay in Melbourne the waiter who attended to my wants at Menzies' Hotel brought up, with something of a dubious air, a scrap of blue paper, on which was written, “Your old friend———.” I instructed him to show my visitor in, and a minute later beheld the face of an old companion, a little more grizzled and wrinkled than I had last seen it, but otherwise unchanged. When we had shaken hands and he was seated, I found that he was dressed like a common labourer; and in answer to my inquiry he told me, bravely and brightly, that he had fallen upon evil times. “I should like a glass of champagne, old man,” said he when I asked him to refresh himself, “and a square foot will run to enjoy it.” We talked away, and he told me of a history of success and failure, and at last he explained the purpose of his visit. He wished to hear the three lectures I was advertised to deliver, and he had come to ask me for a pass. “I shall not disgrace you, old boy,” he added, “I have been down on my luck for a couple of years past but I am not going to stay where I am, and I have kept my dress clothes.” I do not know that I ever saw a finer bit of unconscious courage, and the incident gave me a certain faith in the spirit of the colonies which has never left me. There is a gambling element in it no doubt but the ever present sense of hope is a great and valuable thing. It finds such a place in a new country as it can never have in an old one. The English gentleman who in England had fallen to be a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water would never have “kept his dress clothes.” He would have known that he was permanendy under, but here the British pluck had rational hope of recovery, and on that rational hope survived and even flourished.
And this leads me back to that question of the self-confidence of the Australian-born colonial with which I started. Hope looks so sure, that what Australia wants and has not it seems self-evident in a little while she will have. And so she might if she would go the right way for it, and instead of keeping three-quarters of her sparse inhabitants in towns, would take the work that lies before her nose and subdue the land and replenish it; and instead of shutting the gates deliberately on rival labour, would draw the stranger to her coasts and pour population on vast tracts of land which now lie barren and unproductive, but only wait for the hand of man to break into beauty and yield riches.