From precedent to precedent.”
She believes in the modern scientific spirit, and in none other. “Let us, then,” she says, in her heart, “let us, then, by all means, move towards Federalism. Union is strength.” But the eager grasping nature of her swarm of intelligent labourers will not let her see that the wisdom of her penny tariffs is but the foolishness of the pounds to come. New South Wales, on the other hand, is adverse to Federalism. She does not understand this modern scientific spirit—she dreads it, is jealous of it, and admires it! It is so self-reliant, so self-confident! And she, poor thing, is too much under the sway of the ancient historical spirit to perceive that there is also a modern historical spirit, and that it is good and at her doors. Hence her changeableness, hence her irresolution in the matter. Like her clever unscrupulous politician, Sir Henry Parkes, yesterday she wanted Federalism, to-day she does not: she will not be dragged at the chariot wheels of this dreadful modern scientific spirit which she does not understand, with Victoria shouting and cracking a stockwhip to urge on the horses faster and faster. Is she not the “Queen of the Pacific?” did not Governor Philip tell her she would be “the centre of the southern hemisphere—the brightest gem of the Southern Ocean?” and who shall say he counted her chickens before they were hatched?
To the disinterested seeker, then, after a really fine civilization, it is hard to say which is the more painful sight—Victoria, with her resolute pursuit of a purely intellectual future, which must end in arid barrenness, or New South Wales with her fatuous attachment to the monstrous aspect of the past and present. Which, after all, is the better or the worse, illusion or delusion? Is Victoria never going to perceive that logicians and engineers are not the highest product of civilization? Will New South Wales never shake off the British architect, spiritual and material, and begin to evolve an individual life of her own? Is Mr. Marcus Clarke right when he tells us that “in another hundred years the average Australasian will be a tall, coarse, strong-jawed, greedy, pushing, talented man, excelling in swimming and horsemanship. His religion will be a form of Presbyterianism, his national policy a democracy tempered by the rate of exchange. His wife will be a thin, narrow woman, very fond of dress and idleness, caring little for her children, but without sufficient brain-power to sin with zest.” Yes, this is indeed the future of the two tendencies, which are represented by the illuded progress of Victorian, the deluded stagnation of New South Wales. “The virtuous tradeswoman and the wife of the wealthy lower orders, walking in the happy hunting-grounds of the British architect!” What a picture! It is a satisfaction to think that, if it is to be, we shall never live to see it. But the question arises, “Is it to be?” Has not this acute perceiver of ours been once more writing down one aspect of the thing as the aspect, without staying for a second or third look at the thing itself? is not this a clever view of a part, but a fantastic view of the whole? has not Mr. Clarke, in a word, been leaving us this appalling picture of our future in much the same spirit as the world-wounded Hamlet left his cruel dowry to Ophelia? This, we are agreed, was indeed the future of the two tendencies, which are represented by the illuded progress of Victoria, the deluded stagnation of New South Wales; but we should add—only if they are left to themselves.
Only if they are left to themselves; and it is our hope, our trust that they will not be. We hope, we believe, that these two countries will learn from one another, each the lesson which the other will be competent to teach: that Victoria will awake to the vital importance of giving her Upper Class a Higher Education to correspond to the Elementary Education that she is giving her Lower Class, and that this Higher Education may be one filled with what we have called the modern historical spirit, with culture, with literary Culture: that New South Wales, leading and instructing Victoria here, having first learned from her example to have the courage to evolve an individual life of her own, will in her turn imbibe the modern scientific spirit, will imbibe what I may call scientific Culture; and thus we shall be brought on to the day in which the people of Victoria and New South Wales shall, from their superficial differences, be united by common qualities better than those of fretfulness, cleverness, perverseness, irritability: For in this people lies the possibility of a really fine civilization, in the marriage in them of emotion and intellect, of poetry and prose.
“Is the goal so far away?
Far, how far no tongue can say.
Let us dream our dream to-day.”
One last word on the last of the three vital questions of the day—Higher Education. When, on 1st April, Mr. Patterson, who presides over the Victorian Education Department, went down to Malmsbury to lay a foundation-stone for the Wesleyan denomination, and favoured us with his views on this question, or rather on the education system as it at present stands in Victoria, we had a hope (a faint hope) that he would do something more than sing the praises of the denominational schools in general, and the state schools (“those majestic monuments to enlightenment,” as he says in his profuse political way, “that adorn and bless even the remotest portions of this colony”)—the state schools in particular. Our hope was destined to disappointment. Mr. Patterson had something to say about “the only legitimate checks on the abuse of political power when conferred upon the masses,” and about “the unscrupulousness, as well as the boldness beyond reason” of that man who “would deny that the rising Australians, for sobriety and unassuming intelligence, would compare favourably with the old stock,” so that he “was bound to record his conviction that the future of Australia would be quite safe in the hands of the Australians.” He had also ready a defence of the secular character of the teaching in the state schools, and some nice little left-handed compliments for our good Wesleyans, et hoc genus omne, but not a word, and apparently not a thought, for the legitimate checks on “the abuses of educational power when conferred” on a middle-class as unprepared for rule as the worst education in the world can make it. “The Australian public,” he says, “desires, above all things, to ensure good citizenship.” The Australian public cares little that, in the state schools which it has founded for that especial purpose, dead dry intellectual knowledge is rampant—“that asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles,” as Milton disgustedly puts it, “which is commonly set before our youth as all the food and entertainment of their tenderest and most docile age”—“inanimate mechanical gerund-grinding,” as Carlyle equally disgustedly called it—gerund-grinding and spiritual cockatoo screeching. Nor yet does it care that, in the denominational schools in which its own children are being brought up, the only supplement to the dead dry educational knowledge of the gerund and the cockatoo, is the merest flimsy smattering of Science caricatured and Literature misunderstood. Let us not, however, despair because our sucking colonial statesmen cannot see more than a few educational inches in front of their noses. Have we not got Dr. Moorhouse, our good Bishop of Melbourne, with us, “a mighty man with broad and sinewy hands?” And does he not, on every available opportunity, batter against the brazen walls of the gerund and the cockatoo, and bid them leave off grinding and screeching, and listen to reason? And here, too, is our good Roman Catholic Bishop of Sydney, Dr. Moran (whom we are all so sorry to think of losing), expressing his “fears that the atmosphere of the public schools is too chilly for a great many of our youth?” Perhaps one of these mornings the Victorian public will wake up, tired of listening to the chatter of the religious and secular dogmatists gathered together like eagles over the carcase of “Religion without Superstition,” and there may arise a curiosity and a care for Higher Education and High Schools; and we will hope, then, that no one will be foolish enough to say that they have been a very doubtful success in New South Wales and in Sydney—in Sydney, the home-elect of the six-fingered and six-toed giant of British Philistinism! And, perhaps, some day poor little Culture, putting off the cumbrous armour with which the gerund and the cockatoo want to load him, taking his sling in his hand and a few smooth stones from the brook, may smite great Goliath in the forehead, and cut off his head, and there be a signal rout of all the Philistines, even unto Gath and Gaza and the utmost borders of the land.
May, 1885.
[Note.—I am tempted to republish here a letter, which I sent lately to the Sydney Morning Herald wherein one aspect of the secondary education question was (more or less unconsciously) being discussed. No one, so far as I am aware, thought the letter worth serious consideration: at any rate no one thought it worth replying to, perhaps the reasons for its insertion were simply those which the “able Editor” assigned to me for the insertion of all his correspondence, namely that it be not either too illiterate or too offensive for publication. Well, I am sure that for my own part I am grateful for even so much toleration as this, and shall strive, as becomes my humble position in this great Australian press, to continue to deserve it.]