Chapter XXI: Modern and Democratic Character of

THE AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTION.

The Australian instrument is the true child of its era, the latest birth of Time. Compared with it, the American Constitution seems old-fashioned, and parts of the Swiss Constitution positively archaic. Cabinet Government, whose fully developed form is scarcely a century old, is taken for its basis. Ideas and enterprises, problems and proposals, so new that they are only just beginning to be seriously discussed, figure in it. As slavery, an institution almost coeval with the human race, but essentially barbarous, survived to be mentioned (under a transparent euphemism) in the Constitution of the United States, so a new industrial question—viz. the struggle between white labour and free coloured labour—makes its appearance in this Australian document. Here too are the new products and new methods of science, telegraphs and telephones and the keeping of meteorological observations; here is the extension of the suffrage to women; here are the new troubles which spring from contests between employers and workmen; here the new proposals for throwing on the State the function of providing for its members in sickness and old age; here an express recognition of the right of a State to control the traffic in intoxicating liquors. And above all these one perceives through the whole instrument that dominant factor of our age, the ever-present and all-pervading influence of economic forces, of industrial production, of commerce, of finance. The increased and increasing importance of these influences in the life of the modern world, stimulated as they have been by the amazing progress of scientific discovery, finds a fuller expression in this Constitution than in any other yet framed.

As in these points this Constitution is at least abreast of European and American theory, and ahead of European or American practice, so also it represents the high-water mark of popular government. It is penetrated by the spirit of democracy. The actual everyday working of government in the Australian Colonies is more democratic than in Britain, because Britain has retained certain oligarchical habits, political as well as social. It is more democratic than in the United States, because there both the States and the Union are fettered by many constitutional restrictions, and because wealth has there (as indeed in Britain also) been able to exert a control none the less potent because half-concealed. But the Constitution of this Federal Commonwealth is more democratic than are the Constitutions of the several Australian colonies, in some of which property qualifications and nominated second chambers have survived till now. It prescribes no qualification for a Senator or Representative beyond his having attained the age of twenty-one and being himself qualified to become an elector. He need not even be a resident in the State where he seeks election. The Senate as well as the House is elective; both are chosen directly by the people, and on the basis of the suffrage which each State prescribes for the election of its more popular House. The duration of the House is only three years. The direct popular vote, an institution specially characteristic of advanced democracy, which has been developed independently in the United States and in Switzerland (where it has taken the double form of a Referendum to the people and an Initiative proceeding from the people), is here applied to the enactment of amendments to the Constitution, and, in the form of a general election of both Houses simultaneously, to the settlement of deadlocks between the Houses. There is no veto on the acts of the Legislature, for that vested in the Governor-General and in the Crown is not intended to be used except in the rare cases where imperial interests may be touched. In fact all those checks and balances in the English and American Constitutions by which the censors of democracy used to set such store, have here dwindled down to one only, viz. the existence of two Chambers. These two will be elected on the same franchise and composed of similar men, but the tendency to dissension so natural to rival bodies may sometimes interpose delays and ought certainly to make the criticism of proposals more searching. If the principle of popular sovereignty is expressed with equal clearness in the Constitutions of America and Switzerland, it assumes in this Australian Constitution a more direct and effective form, because many of the restrictions which the two former constitutions (and especially that of America) impose on the legislature in the supposed interests of the people are absent from the Australian instrument. In Australia the people, through their legislature with its short term, are not only supreme, but can, by the legislature’s control of the Executive, give effect to their wishes with incomparable promptitude. For this purpose, the expression ‘people’ practically means the leader who for the time being commands the popular majority. Holding in his hand both the Executive power of the Cabinet and the legislative power of Parliament, he has opportunities of effecting more than any one man can effect under the constitutions either of America or of Switzerland.

The solitary restraint which Australia provides is the co-ordinate authority of the Senate, a hostile majority in which may check or at least delay his legislative projects. Yet if his party in the country be well organized and his programme alluring to the masses he may control the Senate as well as the House, for it does not follow that because the smaller States have prudently placed their interests under the protection of the Senate, they will on the great issues of politics be usually found opposed to their larger neighbours[232].

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Footnote 232:

In the first election of members of the two Houses, which took place
while these pages were passing through the press, every State was
divided upon the issue of Free Trade _versus_ Protection, though the
Protectionist (or high-tariff) party secured more seats, in
proportion, in the House than it did in the Senate.

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This highly democratic character of their Constitution has been fully appreciated by Australian statesmen. The effusiveness with which they dwell upon it is probably more sincere than even that which is displayed by politicians in England, America, or France, when they chant the praises of the multitude. Australians are as sanguine in their temper now as Americans were in the days before the clouds of Slavery and Secession had begun to darken their sky.