time after this was written, Mr. Charles Henry Pearson, sometime Fellow of Oriel, and author of the History of England in the Middle Ages, was elected for such essentially working-class constituencies as Castlemaine and the East Bourke Boroughs, by the votes of diggers and quarry-men.
He is now the Minister of Education in Victoria. Of all Englishmen who have ever recorded their impressions of the Australian colonies, no one, in my judgment, has done so with so much political discrimination as Sir Charles Dilke. Though originally written twenty years ago, the two chapters in Greater Britain entitled "Colonial Democracy," and "Protection," may be read to this day as models of fairness and good-sense. Very different is the estimate that Sir Charles formed of the public men of the colonies from that of Mr. Finch-Hatton. For that gentleman's special behoof, as I know at heart he is really well disposed towards Australia, I will quote a brief passage from the admirable chapter on "Colonial Democracy":—
"That men of ability and character are proscribed has been one of the charges brought against colonial democracy. For my part, I found gathered in Melbourne, at the University, at the Observatory, at
