When the Constitution Bill had been drafted, the next step should have been its reference to the Parliaments of the Constituent Provinces; but it was {227} not even introduced in New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, or New Zealand. In Victoria it was passed by the Assembly and forwarded to the Council, which passed it subject to certain amendments which were never considered by the Assembly; in South Australia it was introduced in the Assembly, and was dropped; in Tasmania it passed the Assembly and was dropped at an early stage in the Council. This procession of failures caused the advocates of Federation to realise that there must be something faulty in the method of procedure, and to ask themselves whether it was reasonable to expect that fourteen independent Chambers, or twelve, if New Zealand be excluded, should be able to arrive at a uniform decision on so complicated and contentious a subject. It was felt, also, that the Parliaments had no popular mandate to deal with the question, and that, in the general apathy and absence of interest, the electors themselves should be stirred up by direct participation in the movement. Accordingly, Mr. Reid, the Premier of New South Wales, invited the Premiers of the other Australian Provinces to meet him at Hobart in January, 1895, taking advantage of the fact that four of them would be there in connection with the biennial meeting of the Federal Council. The invitation was accepted, and a new scheme was devised of which the main principles were the popular election of delegates empowered to meet and frame a Federal Constitution; the reference of the Constitution {228} so framed to a plebiscite of the several electorates and its subsequent transmission for Imperial legislation. The Premiers of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania accepted the proposal in its entirety; the Premier of Queensland agreed to it, except as regards the reference of the Constitution to a plebiscite; but the Premier of Western Australia was unable to concur with the decision of his colleagues. Sir John Forrest did not believe that popular election would lead to the choice of the most highly trained jurists and financiers, who could alone frame a consistent and workable Constitution, and he regarded as absurd the assumption that the average elector could give an intelligent opinion upon a measure of so complicated a character. There is much force in these objections; but it must be remembered that the former effort failed from its dissociation from popular impulse, and that the delegates would have the benefit of the work of their predecessors, which they would be bound to accept as the basis of their deliberations. As regards the plebiscite, it cannot have been expected that the vote of the bulk of the electorate would be more than an affirmative or negative reply upon the broadest issue; but, assuming it to be necessary that the