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a fresh De Tocqueville could arise, and were to make a wide excursion to the Antipodes, he would find ample material for a new work on "Democracy in Australia," or rather, in "Australasia,"—for the adjacent Islands of New Zealand would furnish a most important section. The political philosopher on his travels would encounter seven self-governing democratic States, all claiming to be members of a world-wide empire whose nucleus is a Constitutional Monarchy with an hereditary House of Peers. To such a mind these British colonies would present a series of problems of surpassing fascination; problems which can barely be stated, much less discussed, in a brief chapter, the object of which is simply to explain the ascendency of the democratic form of government in Australia.

And here, at the outset, I would remark that in my opinion the painstaking labours of more than