Amongst men social distinctions are very slight. It is lawful to be friendly with everybody and anybody in town, so long as you do not visit at his private house. And yet for very obvious reasons gentlemen are--except amongst the rising generation--much more common than ladies. A number of wild young men of good family and education have been poured out of England into Australia ever since 1852, and many of them have become amongst the most useful and respected colonists. But until recently there was a paucity of ladies, and the majority of gentlemen had but the choice between marrying beneath them or not at all. Hence frequent mésalliances. You meet a man at the club, and are delighted with him in every way. He asks you to his house, and you find that his wife drops her h's, eats peas with her knife, and errs in various little ways. I am purposely thinking of no one in particular, but fear at least a dozen of my acquaintances will think I am writing of them in making this remark. And it is a sad sight to see a man dragged down in this way, for very few men who marry beneath them can keep up the manner and mode of living to which they were born and educated, while those who do generally retain them at the expense of their own married happiness. Nowadays there are certainly plenty of young ladies in the towns, but for all that one constantly hears of the sons of clergymen and army officers marrying the daughters of grocers and farmers who were quite recently day-labourers. With every freedom from caste prejudice, I am yet unable to see anything but harm to the persons directly concerned in these ill-assorted matches, whatever the good result to the community may be.
The centre round which society revolves is naturally Government House, but a great many people go to Government House who cannot be considered to be in society. To have been to a Government House ball is no more, mutandis mutatis, than to go to a Court ball at home. Neither will give you admission into the inner circle; and though that circle may not offer any but specious advantages and have but little to recommend it in preference to three or four other societies in the town, admission into it is coveted, and inclusion within its boundaries is as much a reality as if its walls were of stone. In Melbourne the scattered position of the suburbs and the extent of the population splits up the élite into several local societies, but there is yet one crême de la crême. In Sydney the same thing takes place, though the local societies are less numerous; but in Adelaide there is practically only one 'society', the local aggregations of individuals not being deserving of any more dignified name than 'cliques.' Of the three societies, that of Sydney is on the whole, I think, the best. At Melbourne there are probably a larger number of cultivated persons, but the distance between the suburbs and the more extravavagant mode of living limits their sphere. The Adelaidians are perhaps the most English of all in their way of thinking, but they are also by far the most narrow-minded. For pure Philistinism I don't think I know any town that equals it. Shut up in their own little corner, they imagine themselves more select than Sydney and Melbourne circles, because they are necessarily smaller. And yet for kind-heartedness these gossip-loving Philistines are not easily to be surpassed. As long as things go well with you they will talk against you; but no set of people are less open to the charge of neglecting friends in misfortune.
Class relations are, on the whole, excellent; and this is the more to the credit of the lower classes, because the plutocracy is utterly selfish in character, and does not interest itself in those social duties, which are proving so effectual a prop to the nobility and landed gentry of England. A certain animosity subsists between the squatters or pastoral lessees and the selectors who purchase on credit from Government blocks of land, which were formerly let to squatters. At times this breaks out in Parliament or at elections, but in spite of a determined attempt by a section of the Victorian press to pit the 'wealthy lower orders' against the horny-handed sons of the soil, class feeling rarely runs high for any length of time. The reason is, that the working-class are too well off for the occasional high-handed proceedings of the rich to affect them sensibly. For an agitation to be maintained there must be a real grievance at the bottom of it; and the only grievance that the Australian democrat can bring forward is, that having obtained the necessaries, he cannot without extra labour obtain also the luxuries of life.
From figures I have already given as to rents, wages, and prices in general, you will have gathered that the cost of living is, broadly speaking, cheaper than in England as regards the necessities of existence, but dearer in proportion to the complexity of the article. Anything that requires much labour, or that cannot readily be produced in the colony, is, dearer; but, on the other hand, it should be remembered that money is more easily obtainable. Protectionist duties and heavy freights form an effectual sumptuary tax; and as most of the duties are ad valorem, first-class articles are heavily handicapped, and a premium put upon the importation of shoddy. The wine-drinker finds that he has to pay ten shillings a gallon on all he drinks, which should certainly entice him to drink good wine; but the only practical result discoverable is the small quantity of wine drunk as compared with beer and spirits. If few people keep carriages, there are buggies innumerable in every town; and for every man who keeps a horse in England, there are, proportionately to the population, ten in Australia.
But perhaps the greatest element in the cheapness of colonial life is its comparative want of 'gentility.' The necessity to keep up appearances is not one-sixth as strong as in England. The earthen pot cannot altogether flow down stream in company with the tin kettle, but it can more safely get within a shorter distance of its metallic rival. Rich men live in miserable houses and wear coats which their valets would have nothing to do with at home; struggling men are less ashamed of struggling, and are not made to feel the defects of their condition so keenly. In a society, the position of whose members is constantly changing, the style of life is of less importance. The millionaire of to-day hadn't a sixpence yesterday, and may not have one again to-morrow. His brothers, sifters and cousins are impecunious, and in small communities poor relations are not easily got rid of. Constant intercommunication is thus kept up between class and class, rich and poor; they learn better to understand each other's position, and a clearer understanding generally leads to mutual respect.
Again, the distribution of wealth is far more equal. To begin with, there is no poor class in the colonies. Comfortable incomes are in the majority, millionaires few and far between. This is especially the case in Adelaide, where the condition of the poorer class is better, and that of the richer worse than in any of the other colonies. In Melbourne the masses seem worst off, and the display of riches, if not the actuality thereof, is most noticeable. In Sydney the signs of wealth are not wanting to an examiner, but a superficial observer would say that there were not half as many wealthy men as in Melbourne. Few South Australians get beyond the comfortable stage, and, on the other hand, a greater number reach it. 'Squatting,' of course, supplies the largest section of the wealthy class; but, especially in Melbourne, gold-mining and commerce have contributed a large quota.
RELIGION AND MORALS.
In no country in the world is the legal freedom of conscience more firmly established than in Australia. All Churches and sects are absolutely equal in the eyes of the State; and any attempt to upset this equality would be resented, not only by the united forces of all the other denominations, but even by a majority of the only two Churches--the Roman and Anglican--who would ever dream of aiming at supremacy. But thorough as is the repudiation by the great majority of the community of the principles of State aid or control of religion, the two Churches which I have just mentioned occasionally raise their voices against secular education by the State, and make spasmodic appeals for State contributions to their denominational schools, which, however little likely to succeed, are not altogether without a rational foundation. But this is the utmost limit which State recognition, or rather the cry for it, is ever likely to reach.
In times past the Church of England has struggled to regain the position she formerly held in the older colonies; but now whatever efforts she makes in that direction are confined to the ambition of being prima inter pares--a position which is vigorously and even bitterly attacked by the other Protestant sects whenever she either tries to assert it or has it thrust upon her. These ex-Dissenters have a lively remembrance of the yoke they endured in the old country, and even now that the spirit of supremacy has so completely died out, they spring up to do battle against any formality that recalls it to them. Thus, a few years ago the whole colony of South Australia was convulsed on the question of the Bishop's right to follow the Governor and precede the Chief Justice at official ceremonies, and peace amongst the devout was only restored by the Bishop's graceful relinquishment of a position to which his legal right was undeniable. Even now the title 'My Lord' as applied to Bishops acts as a red rag on many ex-Dissenting bulls, and they are as jealous of the slightest official preference of the Church of England as if their dearest religious liberties were therein involved.
Legal and even official equality do not, however, always mean social equality; and the Church still retains a superior social position, a shadow of her departed State authority, which to some of her old competitors--especially the Congregationalists, Baptists, and Wesleyans--is the more galling because they are totally destitute of the means of assailing it. Happily, through the wise conduct of the Bishops of Adelaide and Melbourne in meeting ministers of other denominations on a common platform, whenever the cause of Christianity or of good and right in any way can be served thereby, and in showing sympathy with them in a multitude of ways, this unreasonable jealousy is losing ground and a better feeling springing up; but there are yet too many colonists that have felt the disabilities of Dissent in the old country who are unable to put on the armour of forgiveness, or rather of forgetfulness in the new. The enemy has lost his sting, but they will not allow him to live on the remembrance of his past greatness without a reminder of his present impotence.