ggles.

Till 1840, Australia had been a penal colony. Since then,--after the
discovery of the first gold fields,--a multitude of fortune-seekers,
gold-miners, and adventurers joined the population of deported convicts.
The good middle-class element for a long time remained in the minority.
Certainly nobody would have believed that there existed at that time in
Australia all the conditions necessary for the growth of a flourishing and
highly civilized commonwealth. Nevertheless, such was the case. There were
formed seven democratic states, whose people were not bound by any
traditionalism or excessive fondness for time-honored, inherited customs;
these people wished to have elbowroom and were determined to establish
themselves on their own soil in their own way. This all took place the
more easily since England gave the growing commonwealth in general an
exceedingly free hand, and because the inhabitants were by nature
independent. Australia was colonized by those who, having come into
conflict with the laws of the old world, found their sphere of life narrow
and restricted.

Because Australia to-day has only about five million inhabitants, the
country is confronted only in a limited way with the problem of dealing
with congested masses of people, a condition which is favorable to all
social experimentation. Those in authority believe they can direct and
eventually mold the development of the Commonwealth.

Sixty-five per cent of the population are Protestant; the Germanic element
predominates. The women constitute not quite 50 per cent of the
population. Thus in many respects the Australian colonies possess
conditions similar to those prevailing in the western states of the
American Union, and the results of the woman's rights movement are in both
regions approximately the same. Mrs. M. Donohue, one of the delegates from
Australia, declared at the London Woman's Suffrage Congress that her
country had brought about "the greatest happiness for the greatest
number."

Naturally, the Australian governments had originally a series of material
problems to solve, real problems of existence, as, for example, to find a
satisfactory agricultural policy in a predominantly farming and
cattle-raising country. When the economic basis of the country seemed
sufficiently secure, the intellectual interests were given attention. A
country which never had slavery or a feudal regime, a Salic Law, or a Code
Napoleon; a country which has n