Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/104

their judgments upon questions of foreign policy in the mother country, that the opinions expressed here and in Sydney resemble, in some respects, the verdict of history, both in its impartiality and its deliberateness." Lord Beaconsfield duly acknowledged our patriotic tributes in the customary way, but, perhaps, we shall some day know how he was really affected by this singular outburst of personal, not less than public, admiration from outlying dependencies of the Empire, the like of which no other English statesman has ever evoked. It may be worth inquiring why this is so. If we consider the elements out of which an Australian colony is mainly composed, we find hardly anything analogous to the old Tory party in Church and State of which Disraeli became the leader—and educator—in this country. A colony is simply composed of a vigorous, wage-earning, or working class, and an equally hard-working, though more wealthy, employer or professional class, the latter corresponding to the "middle class" in Great Britain. In other words, there are no landed gentry, no aristocracy, and no "leisured class." If we consider such a community as that of Victoria, we shall find that the preponderating majority of the more earnest-minded men—that is, of those who have the making of political