such a waste of ocean from the other Colonies. But, apart from this, it was believed that federation of all the other colonies was now in sight. These hopes were doomed to disappointment. The Bill drafted with such formality was virtually still-born. By several of the Parliaments it was never considered at all. In Victoria it was passed, with considerable modifications, but met with much hostility.
The drawback to all the movements for federation up to this point was that they had no force of public opinion behind them, and they awakened no enthusiasm in the mass of the people. It was, in effect, necessary to wait for a few years, till the native-born Australians had, in two senses, attained their majority. During the 'eighties, this element of the population first perceptibly began to assert itself. The emigrants from the old country, the colonists, began to be outnumbered by their own progeny, the true colonials. And as these latter came to feel their strength (which they soon began to show, if only by an express preference for native-born politicians), the earlier provincial bitternesses, the result, in reality, of the rivalry amongst the pioneers of the infant settlements, seemed to them strangely unbusinesslike and out-of-date. The apathy of the public had been due to the natural inability of the Englishman or Scotsman who had settled in Melbourne or Adelaide (for example), to feel or think as an Australian. And it is largely due to the efforts of the Australian Natives' Association of Victoria that this apathy has, to some extent at least, been overcome. The Association, formed originally for mutual benefit purposes, and admitting Australian natives only to membership, was for some years looked at rather askance by the grey-beards. But it succeeded by sheer pertinacity, and by the force of the rising tide. It took up the cause of federation warmly,
