is definitely outside the Commonwealth) to be consulted. Queensland came in early in September, after a lively campaign, which was carried on throughout the colony: in which the anti-Federalists of Sydney and the whole of Australia showed themselves anxious to spare neither pains nor money over their last stand. Every use was made of the Queensland Separation movement, which had smouldered, with a gradually increasing intensity, for the last thirty years, or, indeed, since the foundation of the colony in 1859, The Separatists desired the sub-division of Queensland into three autonomous States; believing that their vast stretch of coast cannot be administered fairly from Brisbane, which is in the extreme south-east corner of the colony. Now, clause 123 of the Commonwealth Bill forbids the Federal Parliament to sub-divide a State without the consent of the State's Parliament; and moreover, Federation would abolish the right of appeal in such matters (expressly reserved, as it happens, in the existing constitutions of both Queensland and Western Australia) to the Imperial Government. Again, the Southern Colonies would in any case have objected to Queensland being represented in the Federal Senate as three States, with eighteen Senators instead of six. While, therefore, many of the farmers and manufacturers of the south were opposed to federation because it involves inter-colonial free-trade; and the planters were of course against it by reason of their fear of the Australian working-man and his inevitable Asiatic Exclusion Bill; the Northern and Central voters objected to it because it would make their dream of separation for ever impossible; and, finally, the whole South, as such, professed itself resolute to resist any attempt to meddle with Clause 123. The Asiatic question was, and is, particularly serious. Some form of coloured labour is probably essential to the prosperity of the far North. Yet
