• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

The Institute of Australian Culture

Heritage, history, and heroes; literature, legends, and larrikins

  • Home
  • Articles
  • Biographies
  • Books and booklets
  • Ephemera
  • Poetry and songs
  • Slang
  • Timeline
  • Topics
    • Anzac Day
    • Australia Day
    • Australian Aborigines
    • Australianism
    • Australian literature
    • The Eureka Rebellion
    • Explorers
    • Significant events and commemorative dates

Federation and a white Australia [21 September 1895]

4 February 2017 · Leave a Comment

[Editor: A letter to the editor regarding non-white immigration and Australia’s relationship with Britain. Published in The Worker (Wagga Wagga, NSW), 21 September 1895.]

Federation and a white Australia.

Your Federation article recently contains a high percentage of truth. There is too much talk of the kind of Federation aimed at by our “great men;” but if the writer intended by his criticism of the proposals of the average politician to infer that all talk about Federation is bosh, I must cross swords at once. There is a brand of Federation of which we hear too little — that is, the national brand. That brand will give to the adult population of this continent the right to govern themselves without continual reference to treaties, which seem to exist only in order that our country may be made a dumping ground for the human refuse of the world. The creation of a self-governing nation in these southern seas is practical work, and more than that, it is work that cannot be long delayed if Australia is to be retained for white men. New South Wales may be made to legislate upon the alien labor question, but unless she will have the assistance of the other provinces she will legislate in vain. The invasion centres at two spots quite beyond our control— the coast of Queensland and that of Westralia. Practically, it is beyond the control of our local Parliament, even if that body were not paralysed by treaties, in the making of which it has and can have no voice. But the issue is one of life or death to the civilization of Australia.

Like the first approach of a repulsive disease, the colored agony made its appearance — a few brown spots upon the fringes of white Australia. It is extending with marvellous rapidity. Seven years ago, when I first wrote of the matter in the Sydney press, the colored hawker was a new arrival in the province. He is now as familiar in Central Australia as the out-of-work, whose numerical increase keeps pace with his own. He has since been joined by more dangerous foes of the white man — the Jap., and a host of others. Here in Sydney those seven years have made so great a difference that only the wilfully blind fail to notice and comment upon it, yet our neighbors say we know nothing of the trouble as yet. This invasion, peaceful though it be, can only progress at the expense of the white Australian nation we fondly hope is to be. The newcomers waste no time talking of conferences and constitutions. They bring their friends, mix with the populace, marry such girls as will have them, and confidently leave the rest to time. It needs no inspiration to foretell the result — the gradual supplanting of the white races by a hybrid even more repulsive than the original invaders themselves.

The invasion must be stopped. White Australia demands that it shall be coped with, and neither the vested interests of the slave-holders of Queensland nor those of the equally unthinking capitalists of the western province should avail to turn democracy from its purpose. To Britain it is, perhaps, a matter of small moment; to white Australia it is a death-struggle. The Eastern civilization wages war against the Western, and every year that passes without action diminishes the white man’s chances of success. To defend ourselves against this aggression, we must create the Australian nation, for it is plain that the interests of Great Britain and our own are, in this matter, antagonistic. Therefore it is that the ideal of an Australian Republic should be kept ever before the workers of the continent and the sons of the soil, not so much because we want a place in the nations of the world as because we must have unfettered action in the interests of our own people and the fullest expansion of our national life. “A free Australia for a free Australian people!” Is it not a worthy object to command the thought of those who love their native land and seek to make it the best and first among the nations, not from a newspaper point of view alone, but best in the service of mankind and first in the march of true reform?

Hector Lamond.



Source:
The Worker (Wagga Wagga, NSW), 21 September 1895, p. 1

Editor’s notes:
bosh = (slang) absurd or foolish talk; empty or meaningless opinions; nonsense; rubbish ideas

Jap. = abbreviation of “Japanese”; a Japanese person (could be used in a singular sense to refer to an individual Japanese person, as well as in a collective sense to refer to Japanese in general)

slave-holders of Queensland = a reference to those businessmen in Queensland (primarily sugar cane plantation owners and industrialists) who used Kanaka labour (black labour from the Pacific islands, some of whom were the victims of the illegal practice of “blackbirding”, i.e. they were kidnapped, or tricked into boarding ships, by unscrupulous labour recruiters and ship captains, and were subsequently contracted to businessmen as indentured labour)

Filed Under: articles, letters to the editor Tagged With: colonial White Australia policies, republicanism, SourceTrove, year1895

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Australian flag, 100hThe Institute of Australian Culture
Heritage, history, and heroes. Literature, legends, and larrikins. Stories, songs, and sages.

Featured books

The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, by Banjo Paterson A Book for Kids, by C. J. Dennis  The Bulletin Reciter: A Collection of Verses for Recitation from The Bulletin The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, by C. J. Dennis The Complete Inner History of the Kelly Gang and Their Pursuers, by J. J. Kenneally The Foundations of Culture in Australia, by P. R. Stephensen The Australian Crisis, by C. H. Kirmess Such Is Life, by Joseph Furphy
More books (full text)

Featured lists

Timeline of Australian history and culture
A list of significant Australiana
Significant events and commemorative dates
Australian slang
Books (full text)
Australian literature
Rock music and pop music (videos)
Folk music and bush music (videos)
Early music (videos)
Recommended poetry
Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
Poetry and songs, 1901-1954
Australian explorers
Topics
Links

Featured posts

Advance Australia Fair: How the song became the Australian national anthem
Brian Cadd [music videos and biography]
Ned Kelly: Australian bushranger
Under the Southern Cross I Stand [the Australian cricket team’s victory song]

Some Australian authors

E. J. Brady
John Le Gay Brereton
C. J. Dennis
Mary Hannay Foott
Joseph Furphy
Mary Gilmore
Charles Harpur
Grant Hervey
Lucy Everett Homfray
Rex Ingamells
Henry Kendall
“Kookaburra”
Henry Lawson
Jack Moses
“Dryblower” Murphy
John Shaw Neilson
John O’Brien (Patrick Joseph Hartigan)
“Banjo” Paterson
Marie E. J. Pitt
A. G. Stephens
P. R. Stephensen
Agnes L. Storrie (Agnes L. Kettlewell)

Recent Posts

  • Western bush fire: Several crops burnt [5 January 1906]
  • Buy “Australian-Made” [by W. R. Bagnall, 22 June 1928]
  • The Bad Boy [poem regarding Henry Parkes, 12 May 1877]
  • A rod in pickle [political cartoon regarding Henry Parkes, 12 May 1877]
  • “Devil’s luck” [short story, 20 December 1901]

Top Posts & Pages

  • Surely God was a Lover [poem by John Shaw Neilson]
  • Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
  • Timeline of Australian history and culture
  • Freedom on the Wallaby [poem by Henry Lawson, 16 May 1891]
  • The drover’s wife [by Henry Lawson]

Categories

Archives

Posts of note

The Bastard from the Bush [poem, circa 1900]
A Book for Kids [by C. J. Dennis, 1921]
Click Go the Shears [traditional Australian song, 1890s]
Core of My Heart [“My Country”, poem by Dorothea Mackellar, 24 October 1908]
Freedom on the Wallaby [poem by Henry Lawson, 16 May 1891]
The Man from Ironbark [poem by Banjo Paterson]
Nationality [poem by Mary Gilmore, 12 May 1942]
The Newcastle song [music video, sung by Bob Hudson]
No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest [poem by Mary Gilmore, 29 June 1940]
Our pipes [short story by Henry Lawson]
Rommel’s comments on Australian soldiers [1941-1942]
Shooting the moon [short story by Henry Lawson]

Search this site



For Australia


Copyright © 2022 · Log in