There are, however, other aspects of Australian life which mark this contrast with America even more decisively than do the prevailing industries and physical conditions to which I have referred. The coloured element, which in the United States now numbers about 8,000,000, and forms so large a fraction of the whole population, Australia rejects entirely. Neither Chinaman, Hindoo coolie, nor Kanaka will ever be permitted to become to Australia what the negro is to the United States, a considerable and permanent addition to dense population. Scarcely less strong is the objection to the indiscriminate immigration of cheap competitive labour such as that which has filled up America. The arrival at Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane of half a dozen steamships with a living freight such as has been discharged at New York from the steerage of Trans-atlantic liners almost every day for the last quarter of a century would today bring New South Wales, Victoria, or Queensland to the edge of revolution. Assisted emigration has come to an end, save in the two younger colonies. For years {209} the great trans-continental Railway companies and Trans-atlantic steamship companies of the United States have acted as the most energetic emigration agencies in every country of Europe, with the one object of pouring a flood of population, without the slightest reference to its quality, over the lands lying along the newly built Railway lines. An Australian Government which tried in this manner to make its State-built Railways productive, would soon find its occupation of governing gone. That 'pulling in of the latch string' and closing the door which the United States have decided upon reluctantly and late, Australia has begun almost at the commencement of her career. She has determined that her population shall be select. This policy exposes the working man of Australia to the sarcasm that he is quite prepared to repeat in his vast continent that selfishness in respect of land which he is rather fond of denouncing in the landlord of the old world. On the other hand, the United Kingdom has, early and late, sent too many social failures to Australia to justify either surprise or indignation at Australia's aversion to unacceptable immigration. We need not quarrel with Australia's decision in this matter, for it is one which a country has a right to make. It secures more perfect social and political assimilation of new material and avoids the great dangers which flow from placing large political powers in hands unfitted to use them. But if select, then not vast in numbers. Judging from present indications and {210} tendencies Australia is likely to have settled along its seaboard a slowly increasing but singularly wealthy population, whose prosperity will be ministered to by the highly remunerative mining and pastoral industries of the thinly settled interior.