CHAPTEE XI. 



THE COMMONWEALTH RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 



ON the evening of Monday the 31st of December, 1900, the sun 

 set for ever on the Colony of Victoria. The morning of the 1st of 

 January, 1901, dawned on a new year, a new century, and a new 

 political community. Fifty years had elapsed since the close of 

 the struggle that freed the Port Phillip district from its dependency 

 upon New South Wales. That half-century had witnessed many 

 stirring episodes in the assertion of democratic principles, many 

 tentative fiscal experiments, and a vast development of organisation 

 amongst the masses, which threatened to take all the initiative out 

 of Parliament, and to reduce it to a mere reflex of the popular will. 

 It had been a period too of keen and petty intercolonial jealousies. 

 Unprofitable railway tariffs were designed to snatch traffic from 

 the borders in a spirit of rivalry ; scores of Custom-house officers 

 prowled upon the frontier; quarrels over riparian rights hindered 

 beneficent schemes of irrigation ; and a general attitude of standing 

 on the defensive had given acerbity to many Parliamentary utter- 

 ances. But now all was to be changed. The piping times of 

 peace were to replace the days of tariff wars, and all the Colonies, 

 raised to the dignity of States in a vast Commonwealth of mutual 

 interest, were to sink every difference, and present only to the 

 outside world that defensive front they had hitherto shown to one 

 another. 



The first day of the new century was a day to be remembered 

 in Australia, especially by the younger generation. It was appro- 

 priately in Sydney, as the capital of the mother-colony, that the 

 great pageant of the inauguration of the Commonwealth took place, 

 with a splendour and completeness that was the admiration of 

 visitors from all parts of the world. In Melbourne, too, with its 



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