THE COMMONWEALTH 345 



faot that raw land is a liability only convertible into an asset by 

 the labour put into it and the capital expended on it. It is true 

 that some thousands of selectors benefited by the generosity of 

 Parliament, and acquired permanent homes and valuable properties 

 on terms that laid the foundations of fortune. But quite as many 

 more reaped all these profits and gave the State no return in the 

 shape of a settled, productive, ratepaying yeomanry. As soon as 

 their probationary period was completed, they took the handsome 

 profit which the Government had provided in its eagerness to retain 

 them, and cleared out to repeat the operation in other Colonies. 

 Still another, and a very large section struggled on, lacking the 

 means necessary to command success, burdened with heavy mort- 

 gages, living from hand to mouth a life of severe toil, but clinging 

 to the hope that some day a more successful competitor would buy 

 them out. No one who has travelled much in the agricultural 

 districts of Victoria can have failed to notice the unprofitable and 

 make -shift character of the settlement even after a quarter of a 

 century of occupation. 



Victoria has set many object-lessons for the consideration of 

 the English democracy, experiments of vital import and interest- 

 ing character which have not yet found acceptance in the old world. 

 Perhaps the most notable is manhood suffrage. According to a 

 return submitted to the Legislative Assembly in August, 1898, it 

 appeared that after making deductions of certain plural votes, the 

 total number of distinct electors in the colony was 224,198, one- 

 fifth of the whole population. It comes as a surprise to find that 

 in Great Britain, with its restricted franchise, one-sixth of the whole 

 population are registered electors, viz. : 6,891,000 out of 41,748,000, 

 so that the vast gain to democracy by the first bold step of the 

 colonists seems to have been over-estimated. Much as manhood 

 suffrage has been blamed for injurious legislation and partisan 

 legislators, it was an inevitable corollary of the Constitution. In 

 a country where there were no wealthy classes in the English 

 sense, and where a high average standard of comfort engendered 

 independence, no limitations based on mere wealth would have been 

 tolerated. But the blunt nakedness of the principle could have 

 been materially softened in Victoria by allowing a second vote to 



