Letters from Australia

by John Martineau

I have seen more of Tasmania than of Victoria or New South Wales, and have had access to more sources of information concerning it. On account of its natural features it is the pleasantest, politically it is at present the least important of the three. Victoria presents the most characteristic example of the working of extreme democratic institutions. There, if anywhere, owing to the exceptionally general dispersion amongst all classes of men of intelligence, education, and general experience, they have had a favourable field, and there, if one may trust one’s eyes and ears and the opinion of those best qualified to judge, they have produced the most deplorable results. Since these letters were written, an article called ‘Democratic Government in Victoria’ appeared in the Westminster Review for April 1868, evidently written by one who has a close acquaintance (to which I can lay no claim) with the minutiæ of Victorian political life. That an article so able, and describing a condition of things so startling and so new to people in England, should not have attracted more attention there, is a striking instance of our apathy to anything about the colonies. In Melbourne it created such a sensation that there was a rush to obtain the Review at almost any price; it was reprinted, and lectured upon, and became one of the chief topics of interest. Those who care to know what the Legislature is like in Victoria, those who would learn to what ultra-democratic institutions at any rate may tend, should read this article. What little my observation had enabled me to say on the same subject before its appearance is now scarcely worth reprinting, except as corroborative testimony (so far as it goes) of a wholly independent observer (for I am ignorant even of the name of the writer). ‘One result of the system which in Victoria seems to be a necessary outcome of manhood suffrage’ (says the writer)

‘is to exclude any man of inconveniently refined temperament, of a too fastidious intellect, and an oppressively severe independence of opinion, from any part in the representation of the colony. At the present time, it may be said, without any exaggeration, that no such man has the smallest chance of being elected, however liberal may be his opinions, and though he may be a staunch democrat, as democracy is understood in Europe, by any of the larger constituencies of Victoria, outside of the metropolis itself. The candidate who is preferred is the man who has nothing—who is not independent, who is not fastidious, who is not in any way particular or remarkable. Upon such a blank the democracy is able to impress its will most fully....

... ‘As a rule when two men are opposed to each other at an election, in three out of four of the Victorian constituencies, the worse man, the more ignorant, the less honest, and the more reckless is chosen.’ (Pp. 496, 498.)

That is to say, the system is not only the opposite of an aristocracy of birth, wealth, talent, or merit, it is not only the repudiation of hero-worship in any form—even of that lowest form of it, the worship of the demagogue of the hour—but it is a deliberate attempt to set up what the world has not yet had occasion even to coin a word for—Kakistocracy, a Legislature composed of the meanest and worst, chosen as such.

Bad legislation is not the sole or the worst consequence of all this. Far worse is the demoralization with which political life is infected. The very idea of right and wrong, true and untrue, in politics, is in danger of being lost sight of. L’État c’est moi, said Louis Quatorze, and acted accordingly. Ego sum Imperator Romanus et super grammaticam,[1] said an old German Emperor, when an imperfection in his Latinity was hinted at. ‘The majority of the Colony is on our side, and the will of the people is above all rules of right and wrong,’ said (in effect) the Administration of Victoria during the late ‘Darling-grant’ crisis, being too obviously and palpably in the wrong to use any other kind of argument. And for the time being Louis Quatorze was for many purposes the State, Henry the Fowler’s Latin went uncorrected, and Mr. Higinbotham still bears sway by virtue of his majority. But the Bourbon régime is no more, the principles of Latin Grammar remain in spite of any German Emperor, and the doctrine of the infallibility of majorities may likewise in its turn pass away. Sooner or later a democracy is likely to get weary of its puppet delegates, and to revert to the instinct which prompts men to follow strength rather than to drive weakness. The real fear is not so much lest democracy should become stereotyped and permanent in its present condition, as that the legislature, demoralised and weakened by corruption, should some day fall a too easy prey to despotism exercised by some strong unscrupulous hand, and aided perhaps by some one of the colossal fortunes, such as are being accumulated there, and which their possessors have as yet found few opportunities of spending. What form of government can be so unstable, so easily overturned as a corrupt ptochocracy?

There are those who admitting all these evils refuse to connect them essentially or in any degree with the extreme democratic nature of the institutions of the colony. Political results are not traceable and demonstrable like a proposition in Euclid; but it is useless to attempt to ignore the broad fact pointed out in the review already quoted, that legislation has become worse and corruption more rife as the democratic element has been more and more developed. Objectionable as a plutocracy is in theory, it is undeniable that the Legislative Council, which is chosen by electors possessing freehold worth 1000l. or 100l. a year, or being lawyers, clergymen, &c., has been composed of members superior beyond all comparison in character and ability to the members of the House of Assembly which is chosen by manhood suffrage. On the two most important questions of the day, the Darling grant and protection, the Upper House has been steadily right—in Australia outside the colony itself there is scarcely any difference of opinion as to this—and the Lower House persistently wrong. Still less is it to be denied that it is to the too great sensitiveness to public opinion, to the ready and even avowed willingness of the administration to trim its sails to every change of the popular wind, which is the direct consequence of a democratic constitution without proper checks, that many of the worst evils are attributable.

Others, again, there are who avowedly profess kakistocratical principles (if I may be excused for using the word) and say that to place men of superior virtue or talent in a position of authority is to divert and control the natural tendency of the mass, which they consider to be always in the right direction; therefore that it is better that public men should be nonentities than guides or patterns. It is impossible to argue against such a position. One can only take issue upon it, and, pointing to facts, say that the tyranny of majorities over minorities is the form of tyranny most to be feared at the present time, one which may become very prevalent and very galling. At the last election in Victoria the candidates on the Opposition side polled 28,888 votes against 32,728 polled by the Ministerialist and popular party, that is, in the proportion of a little more than seven to eight; yet the result was only 17 Opposition, against 54 Ministerialist members.[2] The large minority did not obtain anything like an adequate representation, and but for the still greater preponderance in the opposite direction in the Upper House, which the popular party seek to abolish, it would have seemed to the world outside as if Victoria were all but unanimous in approving the extraordinary course which the Administration was pursuing.

Looking at these figures it is some small satisfaction to reflect that there is a minority-clause in our English Reform Bill, which asserts, however imperfectly, the principle of representation of minorities. But however sound the principle may be, it will be hard to carry it out by any mere electoral device. No one, for instance, can doubt that there is a large and important and intelligent section of the community at the present time which is really and not only in name Conservative, and which sympathised with the seceders from the late Administration, General Peel, Lord Carnarvon, and Lord Salisbury. Yet at the elections just over not a single candidate raised his voice on their side, or ventured to hint at an opinion that the suffrage might have been unduly or unwisely extended. It is scarcely too much to say that the real Conservatives are almost unrepresented in the present House of Commons. It will be well if, as our constitution becomes more democratic, a larger and larger proportion of those who are most disinterested and best qualified to legislate or govern have not to make way, as has been the case in Victoria, for those who are willing to accept the servitude and the wages of the delegate.

Nor is there any security that democratic opinions will be the only ones for which constituencies will exact pledges. We have just seen the most disinterested and unselfish friend that the working-men of London possess in Parliament, in spite of his ‘advanced’ opinions, constrained to withdraw from contesting a large constituency mainly on account of his undiplomatically expressed preference for a just balance over a false one, and in the face of probable defeat to make way for nonentities who would preserve a prudent silence on such unpleasant topics.

All honour to those amongst our public men who hold popular opinions honestly, and prove their honesty by the consistency of their private lives. The danger is lest they should be swamped by those who having in reality no such convictions profess them with the greater ostentation. For the former are likely to be few in number. The genuine democrat, the man who is readiest to sacrifice himself for the mass, does not in general seek public life.