the recognised necessity, for well-understood financial reasons, of framing the first tariff upon a basis of compromise with a view to returning a sufficiency of revenue to each State to compensate it for the loss of its power to levy indirect taxes. Nor was the situation of the Government towards the Press improved when, in order to bring about a uniformity of postal laws, the Sydney newspapers were deprived of the valuable privilege of free postage, which they had enjoyed for many years. The Government of New South Wales shortly afterwards (1902) followed in the same direction by requiring payment for the carriage of newspapers on the Government railways. The net result of this combination of untoward circumstances is that the path of the Commonwealth has been beset with difficulties from the first, and that local and personal jealousies have raised a babel of complainings, in which the voices of the friends of federation have been drowned, and which has misled public opinion and obscured facts.
The First Parliament.
Yet the feeling of disappointment is not to be justified by the record of legislation. The first Parliament, although its members worked under novel conditions and without the aid of mutual knowledge, laid the foundations of the Union with a thoroughness which will only be properly appreciated when they bear the superstructure.
When Sir Edmund Barton entered upon office (January, 1901) the States were separated by six different and often hostile tariffs. There were six postal and telegraphic systems, and six defence forces; while each of the six States was as a foreign country to its five neighbours in all matters of judicial process. In three years Sir Edmund Barton and Mr. Deakin, on whom, with Mr. R. E. O'Connor, the representative of the Government in the Senate, the chief labour fell—except in the case of the tariff, which was Mr. Kingston's especial
