ies in
enlarged electorates with electoral machinery which will organize public
opinion into two definite lines of policy, and will, by allowing
individual candidature merge the primary election into the actual
election.

All this involves a radical alteration, both in the Constitution and in
the methods of election. But the United States have the great advantage
over France that it does not involve also a serious change in the
national character. It is not unlikely that some such reform must be
brought about before long.

The present position cannot last. The Republican party has so long
identified itself with Capital in all its forms, with the protected
monopolists, the trusts and the corporations, that the mass of Labour
threatens to support the Democrats; and as the latter party maintains
the doctrines of direct government and the infallibility of the
majority, the result will be such a financial crisis and such an
industrial revolution that the Americans will have at last to admit that
their government needs total reconstruction.

+Australia.+--On the first day of the nineteenth century the Union of
the Parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland was accomplished; on the
first day of the twentieth century Britain's daughters in the southern
seas will inaugurate, under her aegis, a new experiment in
democracy--the Australian Commonwealth. The time is opportune, then, for
a review of the tendencies of Australian politics, and for a comparison
with the other great democracies. Thus only can we attempt to cast the
horoscope of the new nation.

Australia starts with many advantages over France and America. The
science of government is better understood now than when they started;
the folly of placing too many checks on the people is recognized; and
the British system of responsible leadership by a cabinet in the
legislature is fully developed. All these features are embodied in the
Constitution, and it only remains for the people to prove their fitness
to work it.

Applying the same tests as we have used in the case of the great
democracies to the present position of Australian politics, what is the
result? First, as regards organization, where do we stand? It must be
confessed that we are far behind Great Britain and America, though
certainly we are not in the same sad plight as France. Still there is
the fact that we are classed among the failures. Take the evidence of
Mr. E.L. Godkin in "Unforeseen Tendencies of