AUSTRALASIA. 



59 



tion from Queensland to Xew Caledonia. Sanford 

 Fleming, a Canadian engineer, whose name has been 

 iatcd from the beginning with the project of 

 an all-British cable, presented estimates in October, 

 !*!>.'>. according to which the cost of such a cable 

 would be 1,600,000 and the returns sufficient to 

 meet the interest and other charges after the third 

 year and accumulate a surplus amounting in ten 

 years to 250.000. Still, no practical step was 

 taken. Meanwhile the French company, in June, 

 1895. entered into negotiations in Honolulu for 

 landing privileges and for a subsidy for laying a 

 cable between the Hawaiian capital and San Fran- 

 cisco. Orders were given for the manufacture of 

 such a cable. In September, 1895, the Hawaiian 

 Government entered into a contract under which a 

 company could be formed for laying a cable from 

 San Francisco to the Hawaiian Islands. This com- 

 pany, chartered by the United States Government, 

 and subsidized by the Government of Hawaii, has 

 the exclusive right to lay cables within the Hawai- 

 ian republic for twenty years. The cable is to be 

 begun not later than May, 1897, and completed in 

 November, 1898. The advocates of a purely British 

 line for military and commercial purposes were 

 stimulated to fresh endeavors, fearing that if the 

 Franco-American cable were laid first no British 

 line would ever be undertaken, and that conse- 

 quently all Canadian messages would have to go 

 through the American office. When the C'anadian" 

 Government called for tenders for the construc- 

 tion of a cable in 1894, the lowest one received 

 was 1,517,000, including maintenance for three 

 years. 



New South Wales. The Governor of the colony 

 is Viscount Ilampden. appointed in 1895. The leg- 

 islative power is vested in a Parliament, consisting 

 of a Legislative Council of 69 members, appointed 

 by the Government for life, and a Legislative As- 

 sembly containing 125 members, elected by the suf- 

 frage of adult male British subjects who have resided 

 one year in the colony and three months in their 

 electoral district. 



In the general election of 1895 there were 257.558 

 electors enrolled, of whom 153,121 voted. The 

 Cabinet consisted, in the beginning of 1896, of 

 the following-named ministers: Premier and Treas- 

 urer, George Houston Reid ; Chief Secretary, James 

 Xixon Brunker; Attorney-General, John Henry 

 Want ; Secretary of Lands, Joseph Hector Car- 

 rut hers ; Secretary for Public Works, James Henry 

 Young ; Minister for Public Instruction and of 

 Labor and Industry, Jacob Garrard ; Postmaster- 

 General, Joseph Cook ; Secretary for Mines and Ag- 

 riculture, Sydney Smith ; Minister of Justice, John 

 Gould ; Vice-President of the Council and Repre- 

 sentative of the Government in the Legislative 

 Council, Andrew Garran. 



The ministry of Mr. Reid has relied for its sup- 

 port on a coalition of the Free Traders, the most 

 conservative political element in the colony, and the 

 Labor party, to whose collectivist theories the Pre- 

 mier is strongly opposed. He calls himself a Pro- 

 gressive, and has enlisted Radical sympathies by his 

 programme of reform in the upper house and by the 

 scale on which exemptions under the land and in- 

 come tax were proposed. His free-trade budget 

 involved the substitution of a land and income tax 

 for the customs duties, which were to be removed 

 from all imports with the exception of narcotics 

 and intoxicating liquors. The exemption of in- 

 comes below 300 and lands up to about 1,000 in 

 actual value was condemned by the Legislative 

 Council. The constitutional crisis that arose ended 

 in a compromise. For the session of 1896 Mr. Reid 

 promised to introduce a bill providing for a modi- 

 fied form of referendum ; also various measures of 



upper-house reform, to be completed in the succeed- 

 ing session. Other measure- dealt with irrigation, 

 amalgation of the savings banks, law and electoral 

 reform, alien immigration, etc. When the Parlia- 

 ment opened, in the middle of May. Mr. Reid's po- 

 sition was not regarded as secure; for Mr. Lyne. 

 the leader of the Protectionist party, was more in 

 sympathy with the Socialists in advocating the doc- 

 trine of state help, and was disposed to offer many- 

 concessions to the Labor section, though he had 

 antagonized the Socialists in opposing the scheme 

 of direct taxation which the Government had sub- 

 stituted for the tariff. The success of Mr. Reid's 

 financial legislation and the new land laws told 

 powerfully in his favor. The treasury statement 

 showed a considerable surplus, but its genuineness 

 was disputed. Under the land act 3.360.0(H) acres 

 had been settled upon in nine months by over 2.000 

 persons. There were fewer unemployed in Sydney 

 than there had ever been. The fiscal changes 

 wrought by Mr. Reid were, in the opinion of many 

 moderate Free Traders, too great and too sudden, 

 especially when carried out in a time of deep de- 

 pression." But the results seemed to justify the 

 revival of free trade. Xo manufactory closed its 

 works or reduced its output, and instead of the 

 land going out of tillage because the protective 

 duty on wheat was abolished, farmers immigrated 

 from protectionist Victoria, and 156.000 more acres 

 were under wheat than there were the year before. 

 The yield of the income tax was 168.000 paid by 

 16.321 persons, of whom 11,000 paid less than 5 

 and fewer than 800 paid over 30. With a favor- 

 able showing for its financial policy, and a pro- 

 gramme embracing upper-house reform and in- 

 creased exemptions from the land and income 

 taxes, the Government held its ground, and de- 

 feated the Opposition on a vote of censure by a 

 majority of 61 to 34. The reform of the Legisla- 

 tive Council proposed by Mr. Reid was the direct 

 outcome of the parliamentary struggle of 1895. 

 The Xew South Wales upper house is, with the 

 exception of the Queensland Council, the most 

 conservative in its Constitution of all the govern- 

 ing bodies of Australia, being composed of 66 nom- 

 inated members who are unpaid and whose tenure 

 is for life. Its critics accused it of having reso- 

 lutely opposed progressive legislation sanctioned by 

 the lower house, and even of straining the Consti- 

 tution so far as to interfere indirectly with the tax- 

 ing powers of the popular Assembly. Its defend- 

 ers, on the other hand, asserted that it had merely 

 fulfilled the purpose for which it was created by 

 delaying the passage of legislation not demanded 

 by the country and only carried by an unreal com- 

 bination in the lower house. Mr. Reid's scheme 

 of reform was very sweeping, including the aboli- 

 tion of life tenure and substitution of a term of 

 six years, the payment of members, and the reduc- 

 tion of their number. This was supplemented 

 further by the proposed popular referendum, under 

 which all important bills upon which the houses of 

 Parliament fail to agree in the course of two con- 

 secutive sessions shall be submitted to a direct vote 

 of the electors. The bill of old-age pensions devised 

 by the committee of the Assembly provided for a 

 pension of 10s. a week for unmarried persons and 

 one of 18s. for married couples. On the occasion of 

 a miners' strike at Xewcastle the Socialists urged 

 Mr. Reid to sanction a measure for the nationaliza- 

 tion of the coal mines. Some of the collieries had 

 not paid dividends for years. Mr. Reid interceded 

 for the men, who struck for 3s. 6d. a ton, instead of 

 3s. 2d. that they were receiving, and after ten weeks 

 of suffering went back to work for 2s. \\d. A bill 

 was carried authorizing the Government to acquire 

 private lands in suitable localities for the purposes 



