698 
PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 
form of capital, and prohibit, every kind of saving, and that all 
members of the community should be co-equal workmen working for 
State wages. 
The factory system, though it destroyed the system of home 
manufacture, and in one sense diminished the personal liberty of the 
worker, in another sense prepared the way for his greater political 
liberty, because men in aggregation learned to feel the power of 
union, and the mental collision proved a high political education. The 
factory workers claimed and obtained a share in the suffrage, and 
their theory of political economy is not the dream of a philosophical 
student, but the demand of men who have votes to back it. 
"VVe have thus three distinct systems of political economy, each 
representing a class interest, each shaped from a different point of 
view. The one rests on the assumption of the supreme importance 
of the land-owners, the next on the supreme importance of the 
traders, and the third on the supreme importance of the receivers 
of wages. Is it necessary to say that a complete system of political 
economy will take cognisauce of them all and do justice to each? 
Until socialism is established the importance of the employing and 
commercial class cannot fail to he recognised, while the prosperity of 
the landed class is intimately interwoven with the general well-being. 
Indeed, it is worthy of note that in these colonies our present financial 
condition is forcing us to recognise, more than we have done of late 
years, how the productive use of the land lies at the basis of our 
prosperity. On every hand we hear the cry raised that the people 
are not only to be put on the land, but that everything that the 
Government can legitimately do is to be done to make their use of the 
land profitable. 'The cry is, Let them have cheap freights, cheap 
money, and let them be helped to the highest price for their produce. 
This cry has no feudal ring about it, because the land-owners whom it 
is thus sought to help are not large but small ones. Still, there is a 
growing feeling, produced by our conditions, that to recover from our 
deep depression we must get more wealth out of the soil, that the land 
only is our great resource, and that if we could but make every 
occupier in the country prosperous, we should soon bid good-bye to 
bad times. We are very far, therefore, from having outlived the 
theory which bases the prosperity of the community on the prosperity 
of the occupiers of land. VV'e are crying out for a more numerous 
landed class and a more prosperous landed class, and this cry is 
begotten of our adversity. 
7.— SOME FACTORS OF FEDERATION. 
By w, McMillan 
To a close observer of tlie proceedings of the Federal Convention 
of 1891 it must have been apparent that the spirit which dominated 
the earlier speeches and proceedings of that body was of a distinctly 
provincial character. Bur it was equally observable as time went 
on that by friction of opinions, mutual consultation, and a wider 
knowledge a process of moulding began which ultimately evolved that 
ruly federal spirit which afterwards found concrete form in the 
