be a united and homogeneous people in the land. In the course of this book I have more than once had occasion to refer to Scotland as affording the most happy illustration of the successful blending of two originally hostile races. But suppose the Highlanders as a body had been Roman Catholics, and had been forbidden, under dire ecclesiastical anathemas, to marry with the Lowlanders, what would be the condition of Scotland at the present day? Now, this is the state of things that the Australians, on the very threshold of their existence as a people, have to face. So long as the Irish-Australian flocks slavishly obey their priests, there must be this great bar and division between what I have called the two races in Australia. But if, as Mr. Topp points out, we can bring the young Irish-Australian children into the State schools, to be trained and educated side by side with the children of more enlightened parents, there may be some hope in a generation or two of raising that section of the community to the necessary level of the prevailing civilisation, whence will follow their complete fusion into the future Australian people.
For good or evil, this free, secular, and compulsory system has been established. Let us, instead of
