_DEMOCRACY AND ITS SAFEGUARDS IN NEW SOUTH WALES_ The necessity for safeguards against financial extravagance and political pressure--The Crown Lands Act--The appointment of independent Railway Commissioners--The Standing Committee on Public Works--The Public Service Board--The unemployed, their numbers and treatment--The democratisation of the constitution--The Labour Party, its history, successes and aspirations. The inhabitants of New South Wales, as of several other Australian Provinces, lived for many years in a fool's paradise. They had received a magnificent inheritance in the land and were able, owing to the proved mineral resources of the country, to draw upon a practically inexhaustible fund in the willing advances of British capitalists. All classes vied with one another, especially in Victoria, in the extravagant loans and expenditure which caused the crisis of 1893, the greatest blessing, as many think, that has ever befallen Australia. Regardless of the burdens it was imposing upon future generations, the Parliament of New South Wales, with which I shall be dealing principally in the present chapter, {35} constructed unnecessary public works, allowed the Civil Service to be packed with the friends and relations of those in power, and authorised roads and bridges almost at the whim of each individual member. This condition of things could not continue indefinitely: on the one side, a rapidly increasing debt, on the other, an enormous army of civil servants, aspirants for employment on public works and local claimants for a share of the expenditure of loan funds, who were able, on account of the wideness of the franchise and the numerous functions undertaken by the Government, to bring pressure to bear upon the Ministry through their representatives in the Assembly. It was essential that the power to borrow should be curtailed; essential also that the possibilities of political pressure should greatly be diminished. The former object could only be achieved at the cost of a comparative loss of credit, the latter by a wise recognition on the part of the electorate of the dangers of unfettered State action under a democratic constitution.