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GROCERS, WINE AND SPIRIT MERCHANTS, ITALIAN WAREHOUSEMEN,

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TO THE HONORARY TREASURER FREE TRADE DEMOCRATIC ASSOCIATION,

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The Single Tax League of Victoria.

HON. SECRETARY, A. C. NICHOLS, "CUPAR," RUSSELL STREET, CAMBERWELL. OBJECTS: To gradually abolish present taxes, and in their place raise all revenue by a tax on land values, exclusive of improvements, and regardless of use or non-use of the land, or whether situated in country or town.

A most Entertaining and Instructive
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"Where wages are highest, there will be the largest production and the most equitable dismost active, and the brain guide best the hand. There will be the greatest comfort, the widest diffusion of knowledge, the purest morals, and the truest_patriotism."-HENRY GEORGE (Protection or Freetrade).

tribution of wealth. There will invention be

affairs of Little Peddlington could not be discussed with less originality. The same eternal round of mechanical contrivances, to the utter exclusion of any broad principle, has furnished the sole material for debate. Whether the railways are to be managed by three commissioners or one; whether the commissioner shall be face to face with the Minister, or whether a board shall be interposed; whether this board shall be directive or merely advisory; all these are doubt questions of political importance, but they are entirely secondary questions. The primary question is the principles on which the railways shall be managed; the question, whether the farmers and miners shall be deemed to exist for the railways, to be fleeced in order that the accounts of the latter shall balance, or whether the railways exist for the furtherance of their prosperity; the question, whether the landowners in the cities, whose land values are so largely due to the existence of railThe railway problem is politically, ways, shall contribute to the railway financially, and socially one of the interest, or whether this shall be most important questions with which squeezed out of the farmers and the Victorian Legislature has to deal. miners alone. If these preliminary For it may be truthfully asserted that questions had been settled, the the fate of our farmers, and therefore secondary question, viz., what form that of the whole people, depends the administration of the railways upon the cost of carrying produce from should take, could have been deterthe farm to the shipping wharf; that mined much more easily. Yet these the railways and the land values which important preliminary questions were they create are the influence which never once alluded to. Apparently tends most to corrupt our public life; there was not a single member of the and that the railway deficit endangers House, not even among the Land our national credit and burdens the Taxers and in the Labour corner, who people with unjust and unnecessary had the courage to bring it forward. taxation. The debate on the Railway Nor did members display much wisTrust Bill might, therefore, have been dom in the discussion of the less thought to bring out any statesman- important question of administralike qualities which might lie dormant tion. It is true the "Trust," that in the Victorian Legislative Assembly. is the Board which was to superWhoever thought so will be utterly vise and direct the General Manager, disappointed. Not a new thought or was ignominiously thrust out. But,

FEBRUARY 1ST, 1896.

PHOENIX TOBACCO has no

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the House then went to the other extreme, and left the entire management in the hands of a single Commissioner, responsible to the Minister. As a consequence, and supposing the Council endorses the decision of the Assembly, the fate of the railways will rest entirely upon the capacity and strength of will of one man. If he possesses the requisite qualities, the best results may be obtained; if he fails in either, political influence will again be rampant, and financial loss inevitable.

Having arrived at this decision, one would have expected the House to have bent its mind to the task of making the position of Railway Commissioner as attractive as these dispositions allowed, so as to secure for it the best man who could be. found. No doubt the prospect of doing so was already meagre enough, for any railway man of proved excellence, occupying an assured position, must hesitate to entrust his reputation and future career to the tender mercies of the Victorian Press and Parliament, after the cruel treatment to which the unfortunate Speight has been subjected. Therefore it was of the utmost importance to assure to such a man a secure tenure and an adequate salary. Yet so short-sighted has been the conduct of the Assembly that it has refused both these indispensable conditions. The tenure of the office has been made as insecure as it possibly can be, for the Commissioner can be removed by two votes in the Assembly, the interval between which need only be six weeks, and the salary has been fixed at a maximum of £2000 a year, less than men in subordinate positions receive in the great railway companies of Great Britain and America. Seeing the difficulties which already stand in the way of obtaining a first-rate manager, Rival for Flavour.

it would, therefore, appear that the Legislative Assembly deliberately determined that our great railway system shall be managed by a man of inferior experience and ability.

same.

One way out of the difficulty yet presented itself, and this one outlet was stopped by the Government in its subserviency to outside influence. Mr. Richard Speight, owing to some faults of his own, but mostly through the cruel rancour and injustice with which he has been made a scapegoat for the faults of Parliament itself, finds himself in the unfortunate position of having to accept any appointment commensurate with his ability and experience, without looking too closely into the conditions attached to the In spite of all his mistakes, he is admittedly one of the ablest living railway managers, of unsullied probity and all the more likely to succeed now, on account of the bitter experience through which he has passed. Not one man in ten but is convinced that he is the best man that could be obtained under any circumstances; a better man for the position, owing to this experience, than the best manager who can be obtained from other countries; immeasurably better than any other man in this or any other colony, with the sole exception of Mr. Eddy. Yet when Mr. Hancock proposed that Mr. Speight should be appointed Commissioner, the Premier declared, not only that he would refuse to accept this interference with the administrative functions of the Government-which might have been justified -but that he and his Government would sooner resign than appoint Mr. Speight to the position. Whatever the motives may have been-both sides of the House attribute it to fear of the "Age"-this declaration, unless it is withdrawn, places the Assembly before the alternative of either throwing out the Government or handing the railways over to some man who cannot possess either the ability or experience to manage them.

to the utter ruin of our producers,
and to the fancied gain of land mono-
polists; the administration is vested
in one man; the conditions of tenure
and salary are such as to preclude the
possibility of the best man being
attracted from outside; and the only
man of eminence in railway matters
among us is to be excluded from the
position. Our only hope now is, that
the Legislative Council will so re-
model the Assembly's Bill as to cause
the latter to re-open the whole ques-
tion. Even to this the incompetence
of the Legislature and the subser-
viency of the Government have re-
duced us, to appeal to the Chamber of
the monopolists to afford the oppor-
tunity to the People's House for un-
ravelling the muddle into which it
has entangled itself.

Federation.
II.

The limitation of federal functions and the absence of legislative power in time of peace, make it possible to establish a Federal Government of a much more simple, inexpensive, and efficient character than has hitherto been contemplated. A merely administrative body, as the Federal Government would be if these proposals were carried out, need not be composed of a large assembly, of a Senate, a Ministry, and a GovernorGeneral, carrying with them a whole army of civil servants. All that will be required is a federal committee composed of delegates from each colony. The number of these delegates might be small-opinions will probably vary between the numbers of two to six for each colony-and they may be elected either by the legislature, both Houses sitting as one body, or by the people direct. If elected by the people, their term of office must be limited; if elected by the legislatures, the safest plan would be to elect them for a fixed period, but The fate of the railways, instead of to reserve to the legislature the right being settled in the best interest of of recall of any of them at any time. the country, is thus made the sport of This committee ought to elect its own faction, and as the House cannot chairman, who would be President of afford to throw out the Government, the Federation, and sub-committees the inevitable result will be that the for the administration of its various railways will be handed over to a departments. These sub-committees Commissioner whose past career can- would sit permanently; the committee not give the necessary guarantees for itself assembling at stated intervals their efficient administration. Thus and also at such other times as the every fault that could be committed President might deem necessary. has been committed. Our railway The revenue required for the conpolicy will be the same as in the past, duct of the federal administration

might be fixed at a certain sum per head of the population, to be paid by each colony according to its numbers. This would ensure a constantly increasing revenue to the federal body without any power of taxation being accorded to it, though the federal committee might be granted the power to revise the contribution per head, say once every ten years. On the outbreak of war, however, the federal committee must have the power to increase this levy to any required extent, the status quo ante being reverted to as soon as the war ceases, except with regard to loans contracted for war purposes.

In order to safeguard the interests of the Imperial Government, the Governor of the colony in which the committee holds its session, or any other selected by the Imperial Government might act as the Governor of Australia, and as the committee has no legislative functions, his duties and powers in that respect would be exceedingly slighte

A Government thus constituted would manifestly be cheaper than any other form of government, and would at the same time be more efficient. It would exclude the possibility of that political influence being exercised which is the bane of all our local administrations, and which would be infinitely more powerful over a federal Ministry, constituted on the ordinary plan.

These, then, are the practical suggestions which we put forward for the federation of the colonies, and it now behoves us to elucidate the principles on which they are formulated in order to sustain the claim, already put forth, that such a system would prevent the loss of freedom which more ambitious schemes involve.

It is an invariable rule, supported by the experience of all ages, that delegated power tends to become absolute in the ratio of the distance which separates those who delegate that power from those who exercise it. That is to say, the greater the number of the people, the wider they are separated from each other and from the seat of government, the greater becomes the difficulty of exercising efficient control over the actions of their representatives and government. In The Heart of Midlothian" Sir Walter Scott gives amusing expression of this tendency, when he causes a worthy burgher of Edinburgh to say:

"I dinna ken mukle aboot the law, but I ken, when we had a king and a

Smoke "DON" TOBACCO for Enjoyment.

chancellor and a Parliament of our ain, we would aye peeble them with stanes when they werend guid bairns. But naebody's nails can reach the length of Lunnon."

This truth holds good everywhere, for it is founded in the very nature of things. Within a small district people more or less know each other, are actuated by similar sentiments and possess similar interests. They are,

therefore, predisposed to co-operation and

can easily combine for it. Within such small districts, therefore, a government cannot easily use some sections or interests for the coercion of other sections or in

terests. Over wider areas, however, these forces of cohesion are much less active, and within them the government can much more easily pit some sections or interests against other sections and interests, and rule the people because it divides them. This is the main reason why the people of small States have generally been able to enjoy more freedom and a more efficient control over their

government than the in

before

power and the functions of the central other political institution, right up to
government within the narrowest and including that chamber of
limits, and we must, at the same time, millionaires, the Senate of the United
develop the power and functions of the States. Prominent Americans of
local governments, from the shire every shade of political opinion,
council upwards, so as to oppose a de- calmly tell us of such-and-such a
centralising tendency to the centralis- millionaire "owning" the legislature
ing tendency, which the creation of of two or three States; of courts of
the simplest form of federal government justice having been "bribed
involves.
giving their verdicts; a Vice-Presi-
dent of the Re-
public presides
at a public
dinner given to
a notorious brib-
ing agent, and
actually sings
his praises be-
he has

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS.

habitants of large empires; why, as That which strikes one first in the small States grew into large empires, political condition of the United their people generally have lost the States, and which fills its friends freedom and equality which they pre- with apprehension, is the universal viously enjoyed. If, then, we want to corruption of its governmental secure to the future citizens of Aus- agencies. The administration of tralia the greatest measure of freedom American cities has become a bye. and that equality of opportunities and word and a scandal throughout the rights to which political freedom is the world, but it is not so well known stepping stone, we must curtail the that similar corruption taints every

cause

carried a State for his party by the liberal use of "soap; duties are alternately increased and reduced by Congress, in order to enable certain rings and trusts who command them to enrich their members by the exclusive knowledge of the coming change, and only two years ago the more respectable journals, democratic as well as republican, openly charged certain senators with being bribed by the Sugar Trust.

This corruption is eating out the heart of the great republic, a corruption which is all the more remarkable because it stands in strong contrast to the honesty and piety of the great mass of the American people.

To us, therefore, who are going to establish similar institutions, whose duty it is to see that no similar corruption shall invade and undermine them, it is of the utmost importance to ascertain whence this corruption springs, and what is its cause or

SMOKE PHOENIX AROMATIC TOBACCO.

PHOENIX AROMATIC AND DARK