172 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS—SECTION H. 
of the greater part of the native-born population (who came, of 
course, mainly from northern European countries) entirely 
changed their conditions of life when they settled in Australia. 
That ‘change of surroundings will at last produce changes in the 
jose, habits, and modes of thought, which were , prevalent 
in the old world among them. In the future characteristics will 
inevitably develope, which may be properly called Australian, or 
racial, But such changes are not made in a generation or two. 
Such as may be observed in the earlier generations of the native- 
born are not of the kind referred to—that is to say, are not 
characteristic nor permanent. They are such as may be observed 
in the individual long resident in an alien climate, and such as are 
ready to disappear after return to the land of his forefathers. It 
is most important that this slowly-approaching, this momentous 
change, should be watched. But how does the case stand? Have 
any steps at all been taken to observe and to record it? Does any 
register exist from which its beginnings may be ascertained, and 
its direction forecast ? The only way in which this could be done 
would be by connecting the individual records of birth with the 
corresponding records of death. But in no province, nor in all 
the provinces (which together constitute but one country, and on 
any reasonable plan of vital statistics would be dealt with as a 
whole, as well as in parts distinguished by their geology and 
their climate) is there the organisation which would warrant the 
statement of which our politicians are fond, that ‘“ we assist at the 
birth of a nation.” For want of the foresight which is the 
characteristic of statesmanship, we do but stand by while a nation 
evolves itself—a nation that may some day arouse to find its mode 
of government unsuited to the altered customs, the altered habits 
of thought, the altered views of morals, into which it has been 
imperceptibly moulded by surroundings alien to the race from 
which it sprang, and from which it took its laws. 
And under the circumstances of life in Australia which I have 
described, I venture to say that the manner in which many of 
the particulars at present gathered are often dealt with is not 
only useless but misleading. As we have taken the Acts from 
the old world, so (though by no means necessarily) are we in the 
habit of comparing the results they afford us with old-world 
results. It seems to be forgotten, or at all events it is practically 
overlooked, that death-rates have appreciable value only in relation 
to various coincidental conditions—to race, feeding, climate, 
density, as well as to many others. We never tire of comparing 
our general death-rates with those of countries which differ from 
ours in nearly every condition of life as widely as, on the same 
globe, is well possible; and especially we refer our results to 
English standards. If unlike things may be compared, that is 
ine witable ; for English statistics are at once fuller and, with the 
discount to which all such figures are liable, more accurate than 
