and pursued different courses in their individual political life. Disputes were frequent and they led to a bitter antagonism between the colonies, the deplorable results of which make themselves felt even to-day. The different gauge of the railways in each colony and the lack of compre-hension for common interests in questions of traffic are such deplorable legacies of the time in which separatism was at its highest in the Australian colonies. The English social customs, the British dislike of foreigners, of other customs and language, the racial aversion for the coloured population were the agents forming the Australian inhabitants of all the colonies into one national body in which but the Australian consciousness, the feeling that all white Áustralians are one nation, had still to be roused.

In those days it was open to all to immigrate into Australia, but for the white foreigner the beginnings were very difficult. If he wished to assert himself, he had to embrace the customs and language of the earlier settlers proud of their English origin. The English reservě, the selfconsciousness of the Sons of Albion delighting in their splendid isolation from the influences of the European mainland, continued in the Australians in a new form. There was the hereditary tendency towards isolation which carried the day when but a short time ago the national unification of Australia was accomplished.

In this period of colonial autonomy contemporaneons with the rapid influx of emigration from Europe to America many new and impor-tant moments prevent a more numerous and continual immigration of whites into Australia. When soon the transient boom of the pla-cers ebbed away, the throng of immigrants declined too. The journey was still very long, expensive and troublesome in com-parison to the way to America, and there was much less hope to return in case of failure. The drawbacks of the Australian climate were exaggerated, the unruliness of suspicious elements, former convicts, and the danger of bushrangers and aborigines were deterrent, while in the face of such drawbacks but a few cases of quickly made fortunes were known and while in the United States of America many new-comers acquired great wealth in a short time.

The conservative elements in the parliaments of the Australian colonies, and especially the squatters had little cause for furthering white immigration. They were struggling hard against wide circles of the people getting hold of the soil, the liberal professions and securing civic rights. They did not feel inclined to imitate the great American ventures as the construction of transcontinental railways.

Separatist narrow-mimdedness combined with a disinclination to grant to foreign capital too great concessions of soil and other Privileges so as to promote the Coming of new immigrants. From selfishness the propertied classes were not against the employment of coloured Iabour especially of Chinamen and of the so-calles Kanakas, Melane-sians imported to work in the plantations, especially of sugar-cane, in Northern New South Wales and Queensland. To please them convicts were again sent out to Australia as cheap labour. Not without reason Dr. Lang accuses them of selfish greed, of having robbed the British