Some one once said that any government is good enough for the people who can stand it. That is true of all countries, and it is so in a peculiar sense of the empire which all good Englishmen hope will some day develop out of the newly-made Australian Commonwealth. But before that happens Australia will have to evolve an aristocracy of some sort. The old territorial magnates of twenty-five and thirty years ago have been gradually squeezed out. Some of them, the fortunate ones who located themselves on well-watered territories, and others who found minerals under their sheep pastures are still the highest class of Australian society. The rest have seen their estates eaten into by the cockatoo selector and the person who went out with an assisted passage to a free grant of land in the hope of being bought off or selling his “improvements.” This process almost destroyed the best aristocracy that Australia could have possessed, and the democratic vote finally wrecked it, for your true democrat never sees further than the day after to-morrow. In fact, his political horizon is usually bounded by the next sunset, and the natural result has been that the balance of political power in Australia has been transferred from those who have put brains, capital, and enterprise into the country, to those who had nothing but votes to invest—and votes to-day are very cheap in Australia. The logical outcome of such a condition of affairs is that what the uneducated and irresponsible majority want they get. It is not a question of general utility or national prosperity. If the government of a colony does not do what the more ignorant mass of voters want, that government has either to give in or get out. As a rule ministers give in that they may stop in, because places are snug and salaries liberally proportioned to the labours which earn them.