wealth is a party, or a State, or the residents of different States. It hears appeals from the minor Federal courts and from the Supreme courts of the States. No appeal may be taken from the decision of the High Court to the British Privy Council on questions involving the limits of the constitutional powers of the Commonwealth or of the different States, unless the High Court certifies that the question is one which ought to be determined by the Sovereign in Council. In all other cases, appeals lie to the Privy Council, subject to the rules of procedure established by the Australian Parliament.
The rights of the States are affirmed in the clause reserving to them all powers not delegated to the Federal Government. Their present constitutions continue in force, their laws are judicially recognized, and their territorial integrity and political influence are guaranteed by the provision that no amendment altering the boundaries of a State or reducing its absolute or proportional representation in Parliament is valid without the consent of the State; whereas, an ordinary amendment to the constitution may be passed by a majority of both houses of Parliament, and ratified by the people of a majority of States, constituting at the same time a majority of the whole body of electors in the nation. New States may be carved out of one or more of the original States with their consent, and Parliament may prescribe conditions for the admission of new States into the union.
The Australian Constitution, like the Constitution of the United States, upon which it is modeled, is the result of compromise between the principles of loose federalism and centralization. The former was undoubtedly favored by the great majority of people, but met with strong opposition from the powerful labor element, which was especially influential in New South Wales and Victoria, and succeeded in defeating the constitution at the first referendum. This party, which may be considered the democratic or even the radical party in Australian politics, assailed those provisions especially which made the passing of a constitutional amendment for changing the boundaries of a State so difficult. They also pointed out the anomaly presented by a responsible ministry in a Federal Government where either house may claim an equal right to control the cabinet, and they insisted that in the course of time the ministers would be made answerable, not to the popular House, in spite of its control of the purse, but to the Senate, which is the stronghold of particularism, and which, by reason of its longer duration and the fact that it is renewed by rotation and not in mass, could pursue a more consistent and more aggressive policy than the House of Representatives. The example of the United States Senate was cited to prove that an upper house possessing no powers of originating bills of revenue may yet become the leading factor in shaping legislation. But perhaps the most disputed clauses of the constitution were those providing that three-quarters of the national revenue should be redistributed among the States in proportion to their original contributions. The reason for this provision was the fact that the transfer to the Federal Government of the custom and excise duties, which were the principal sources of revenue in all the colonies except New South Wales, would have bankrupted some of the States and seriously crippled all. Moreover, the logical result of the provision would be the imposition of a high tariff on imports, since the General Government was limited to the use of one-fourth only of the total income. To the people of New South Wales, which has consistently been a free-trading colony, the prospect of a high protective system was disagreeable. The question lost nothing in importance after the inauguration of the new government; the elections for the first Parliament were fought out on the tariff issue, and the result of the elections showed an almost perfect balance between the advocates of low tariff and protection.
The Commonwealth has been regarded by many students of politics as a step toward complete Australian independence. The veto power lodged in the Crown and the right to appoint the Governor-General of the Commonwealth are of only little importance as binding ties between the mother country and Australia, in view of the British theory of the relations of the executive toward the legislature. Practically the only bond between Australia and the Empire is the right of appeal from the courts of the Commonwealth to the Sovereign Council. In the constitutional draft submitted to the British colonial Secretary, it was provided that no appeal should lie to the Privy Council except in cases involving the interests of some other part of the Empire. The British Colonial Office insisted upon the modification of this clause, and in the final act it was given the form already described. It is generally conceded, however, that in practice the tendency would be to restrict the exercise of the right to appeal to the utmost.
AUSTRALIAN GUM-TREES. See Eucalyptus.
AUSTRALIAN LIT'ERATURE. Australia was not claimed for Great Britain until 1770, and the first settlements were penal. Then followed the sheep-farmers, and, on the discovery of gold in 1851, a horde of adventurers. By 1859, Australasia (Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand) consisted of seven independent colonies. The period of national unity did not begin till 1901, when these States, except New Zealand, were federated under the name of the Commonwealth of Australia. Young Australia has not had time to develop a literature of her own. She is where the United States was a century ago — in the imitative period. Her first writers, who came midway in the Nineteenth Century, were Englishmen or Scotchmen bred at the public schools and at the universities, some of whom returned to the land of their birth; while several contemporary writers, though in some instances born in Australia, have settled in London. Hence by Australian literature we can mean no more than English literature inspired by the life and scenes in this island of the South Seas.
The early settlers carried out with them little volumes of their favorite poets, and in the loneliness of bush-life began to write lyrics in imitation. Indeed, there is hardly an English or American poet of the Nineteenth Century whose voice has not been echoed in Australia — Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson, Browning, Poe, and many others. But as time has gone on, Australian verse has more and more forgotten its models, and has assumed local color. Its themes are taken from incidents of the town and the
