e
thing most to be dreaded amongst many and terrible enemies. They not
only threatened but they carried their threats into effect in many
places; and but for the exceptional rains, which mercifully interfered
between them and their purpose, they would have created scenes of
boundless desolation. Here again a government has no sense of fair-play.
Troops were sent to watch the shearers' camps and to prevent active
hostilities. A natural thrill of horror ran through the country at this
autocratic and unwarrantable act. Here at the Antipodes we have
founded a democracy, and in a democracy the government motto should
be nonintervention. The unionist workmen roared with indignation at
countless meetings. Why were not the shearers allowed to settle
the dispute their own way? Why were the poor men to be threatened,
intimidated, bullied by armed force? A continent cried shame. When, in
that eight hours' procession to which I have already twice referred the
shearers' deputation rode by, they were received with rolling applause
all along the line, and a free people cheered the victims of oppression.

In the middle of all this madness it was good to see that the greatest
of the democratic journals had the courage of honesty and spoke its mind
plainly. The _Melbourne Age_ is a very wealthy and powerful journal, but
it risked much, for the moment at least, in opposing the mingled
voices of the populace. Excited leaders of the people denounced it in
unmeasured epithets, and the crowd boo-hooed outside its offices in
Collins Street, but the writers of the journal went their way unmoved,
as British journalists have a knack of doing.

I find here an opportunity of saying the most favourable word I can
anywhere speak for the Australian Colonies. The Press is amongst the
best and most notable in the world. The great journals of Melbourne and
Sydney are models of newspaper conduct, and are nowhere to be surpassed
for extent and variety of information, for enterprise, liberality,
and sound adhesion to principle, or for excellence of sub-editorial
arrangement, or for force, justice, and exactness in expression. It is
not only in the greater centres that the Press owns and displays these
admirable characteristics. Adelaide, Brisbane, Dunedin, Christchurch,
Auckland, Wellington have each journals of which no city in the world
need be ashamed; and when the limitations which surround them are taken
into consideration their excellence appears all