Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/121

 constitution, which has been created, and is still sustained, by the labours of a number of men as patriotic as himself, and with much more experience of human affairs. Little as he suspects it too, the individual whom he gibbets as "Mr. Straight" began his public career, as every Victorian knows, as a nominee of the anti-democratic party. The superfine local grandees of Brighton, a fashionable seaside suburb of Melbourne, rejected the present Chief-Justice of Victoria, and returned to Parliament in his stead the subject of Mr. Finch-Hatton's gibes.

It is, in fact, only another instance that the anti-popular party in Victoria has often been the anti-patriotic one. Let us by all means frankly admit that colonial democracy, like every other human movement or institution, is full of imperfection. But let us at the same time make some approach to fair-dealing and justice. What is called "society" has perhaps grown to some extent alienated from politics in these young democracies. But whose fault is this? To my mind it is largely, though I do not say altogether, the fault of that small section of wealthy colonists, who arrogate superiority over their neighbours, purely on account of their bank balance. In