352 A HISTOEY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



that they have not achieved the object for which they were osten- 

 sibly imposed, namely, to secure to the Victorian workman the 

 right of manufacturing at least a large part of the goods represented 

 by the 20,000,000 annually paid for imports. The actual increase 

 of population in the interim will not nearly account for the figures, 

 and the inference is that the laws of supply and demand cannot be 

 arbitrarily superseded by any tariff legislation, though demand 

 may be slightly circumscribed by making supply unduly costly. 

 In such case, as a rule, a substitute is discovered and utilised. 

 Meanwhile, professional classes, the farmer, the miner and the 

 men who live on fixed salaries bear the impost in the enhanced 

 cost of living, a few manufacturers make large profits, a number 

 of mechanics earn good wages, and thousands of young people 

 crowd into a gorged metropolis and earn a bare subsistence at 

 work which teaches them nothing. Eventually, as improved 

 machinery or periodically glutted markets drive them forth, they 

 join the ranks of the unemployed, one of the permanent evidences 

 of misdirected legislation. They are the victims of the system, 

 largely unemployable, for they know no trade. Physically unfit 

 to follow the plough, they cannot dig, but to beg they are not 

 ashamed. 



It is needless to dwell longer on the hindrances to progress 

 under which Victoria has suffered. The hostility of organised 

 labour to any form of immigration ; the influence which it wields 

 over Parliament in the harassing of business enterprise ; the diver- 

 sion of the incidence of taxation from the whole to the selected few, 

 and the unabashed manner in which it has from time to time traded 

 its support to Government or Opposition to secure specific class 

 interests no matter at whose cost. These have been really serious 

 clogs on the wheels of progress. The sturdy, self-reliant democracy 

 of Victoria's early years became enfeebled by the prevalent habit 

 of leaning on the Government for support in every case that pre- 

 sented the slightest difficulty to individual or co-operative effort. 

 Probably one-half of the mass voters in Victoria have a hazy idea 

 that what they call State socialism is the triumphant outcome of 

 democracy, instead of being a lazy abandonment of the manly effort, 

 energy and capacity which mark the independent democrat. They 



