visitor, and this exists inexplicably enough even
amongst the people who despise the visitor, and the land from which he
comes. They ask for candour, but they are angry if you do not praise. A
good many of them, whilst just as eager for judgment as the rest, resent
praise as patronage. It is certain that, in a very little while,
this raw sensitiveness will die away, and leave a feeling of national
security, which will not need to be shored up by every wanderer's
opinion. At present the curiosity for the traveller's opinion is a
litde embarrassing, and more than once I was reminded of a drawing of
Du Maurier's in _Punch_ where a big man standing over a little one
declares: "If any man told me that was not a Titian I would knock him
down, and I want your candid opinion."

There is a stage of national hobbledehoyhood and Australia has not yet
grown out of it. Vanity, shyness, an intermingling of tenderness and
contempt for outside opinion, a determination to exact consideration
before yielding it--all these are characteristics. The working man is
surly to the man who is better dressed than himself, not because he
is naturally a surly fellow, but because he has not yet found a less
repellent fashion of asserting independence. I shall come to the
consideration of the great colonial labour question by-and-by, but the
attitude of the working man is curiously consonant with the monetary
characteristics of the land he lives in. Labour is growing towards such
a manhood of freedom as has never been achieved elsewhere. It, too, has
reached the hobbledehoy height and has all the signs which mark that
elevation, the brief aspirations, the splendid unformed hopes, and the
touchy irascibility.

I have said what I can to justify the dislike of England, but have by
no means exhausted the explanations of the fact There are explanations
which do not justify and the most important of all seems to me to come
under that head. The greatest danger to the contented union of the
Empire is the protecting of a selfishness so abnormal as to excite anger
and impatience. But since anger and impatience are the worst weapons
with which it is possible to fight, it will be wise to lay them by,
and to discuss the question unemotionally. Australia is governed by the
working man. The working man has got hold of a good thing in Australia,
and he has resolved to keep it and, if he can, to make it better. He has
got it into his head that the one thing to be af