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 best a rude human contrivance, but the justification of colonial democracy broadly rests on the fact that the colonies could not be governed in accordance with their progressive needs either from Downing Street or by Colonial Office nominees located in the colonies. That being granted, and as a consequence "responsible government" established, there was no possible halfway-house between an irresponsible bureaucratic system and open and avowed democracy.

But the real secret of the rapid triumph of democratic principles was simply this: the party opposed to them was in the truest sense of the term the anti-colonial party. In the early stages of these colonies the members of this party regarded their stay in these immature communities simply as a kind of exile. When they had amassed sufficient money they intended to retire and live in England. With all their gentlemanly characteristics and fine manly virtues, this was the case with a great majority of those splendid pioneer squatters of Port Phillip, now Victoria. With the heterogeneous influx of population, caused by the gold-fields, the aristocratic disgust of these men towards the colony was intensified. It therefore happened by a process