Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/223

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NATIVE AUSTRALIANS
191

In these words the "Australian native" opens what he intends shall be a very original and startling discourse, and then with much complacency, not to say joviality, proceeds to point out how in an increasing ratio the colonial-born will "supply the places of their fathers, who will vanish before the tooth of Time." He then lays down a series of sweeping generalisations or sociological dogmas, relative to the new national type of humanity now coming into existence in Australia. These racial speculations, I must frankly confess, read to me like an odd mixture of the phraseology of First Principles and the ideas of Alice in Wonderland. The coming Australian is to enter upon the stage freed from all the wretched impedimenta of the historic past. His advent is to mark an entirely new era. When he takes over his patrimony, Australia, from his father, the "foreigner," the astonished Old World will see something very like a new revelation upon this earth. Here is his glorious vision of himself in his future public capacity as political lord and master of the great island-continent.

"Knowing, therefore, that the interest of the few is the robbery of the many, the Australian will sternly repress log-rolling and swindling, and will