The Australian Commonwealth is composed of young and lusty nations which have bred a magnificent race of men and women; but they have also developed a form of government which is far too broadly based upon that specious absurdity, the equality of man. In fact, in Australia, they have gone farther, for another tenet of their political creed is the equality of women with each other and with men. One of the natural results of this is that, although the best sort of Australian wife is almost invariably the political ally of her husband, her housemaid and her cook and washer-woman, who of course greatly outnumber her and are much more receptive of the wild-cat theories of the demagogue, have votes also, and use them—frequently with weird effect. Education, experience, social standing, and personal character go for nothing. A vote is a vote, no matter who gives it. In fact this fundamentally hopeless system is worked out to such a deplorably logical extremity that those women who, through misfortune or intent, have crossed the borders of what we call here respectable society have the lodger-vote in Australia. This fact is, I believe, unique in the records of democracy from the days of Cleon until now. It is, of course, only in the ordinary development of human affairs that such a system of election should not produce the best of all possible rulers. Some time after my return to England I wanted to write an article for an English daily newspaper on the subject of Australian Politics. The editor declined to have anything to do with it. He thought I was, as they say, talking through the back of my hat, until I asked him whether he thought the Australian politician was anything like the men whom he associated with Downing Street? He seemed to think that they were about on the same level, I then asked him whether he could conceive Lord Salisbury, Lord Rosebery, and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain playing poker with travellers and strangers in a London club, and then having to be telegraphed to by the said strangers for the money they had lost to them? He said he couldn’t. I said it was a fact, and so it is. That is the difference between Imperial and Colonial politics and politicians—from which it will be seen that there is no comparison to be drawn between the more or less efficient statesmen whom we manage somehow to get into power in this country, and the person whom the male and female votes of the Australian Commonwealth puts into office over there.