which capital can have is that the predominant party, which is to-day the Labour Party and those who sympathize with its aims, should have responsibility as well as power. The solid elements of sanity, patriotism, and sagacity which make its strength would then be visible to all the world, and even hostile critics would perceive that the extreme utterances of agitators or enthusiasts are not more representative of the aims or methods of Australian Labour than the speeches on a Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park are representative of the opinions of the working-classes of Great Britain.
The Labour Party.
For the moment, however, the Labour Party is a cause of offence to persons in authority who have the ear of the Press, and a stumbling-block, through misunderstanding of its aims and methods, to many well-wishers of Australia.
The changes in the attitude of the Labour Party towards federation curiously illustrate the perversity and unexpectedness of politics. Although one of the resolutions on which the Constitution was based declared in express terms (upon motion by the present writer, made at the first meeting of the Convention) that its purpose was *to enlarge the power of self-government of the people of Australia,' and although the Bill was drawn, in conformity with this direction, upon more democratic lines than any Constitution past or present, the Labour Party opposed its adoption at every stage, because they were unaccountably possessed of the idea that the equal representation of States in the Senate would prevent majority rule, and that the movement towards national unity cloaked some insidious design of 'militarism' and 'imperialism.' No sooner, however, was the new Constitution established than these misapprehensions vanished, and the commonsense of the people perceived that the influence of a well-organized party with definite ideas must be in-
