Another notable man with whom I had three hours' talk was Charles Dudley Warner, the humorous writer. I am not partial to American humorists generally, but the delicate and subtle humour of Dudley Warner I always appreciated. In our talk I saw his serious side, for he was keen on introducing the indeterminate sentence into his own State, on the lines of the Elmira and Concord Reformatories. He told me that he never talked in train: but during the three hours' journey to New York neither of us opened the books with which we had provided ourselves, and we each talked of our separate interests, and enjoyed the talk right through. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe I saw, but her memory was completely gone. With Julia Ward Howe, the writer of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" I spent a happy time. She had been the President of the New England Women's Club for 25 years, and was a charming and interesting woman. I was said to be very like her, and, indeed was often accosted by her name; but I think probably the reason was partly my cap, for Howe always wears one, and few other American ladies do. Whenever I was with her I was haunted by the beautiful lines from the closing verse of the "Battle Hymn"—

In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born, across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me; As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.

At her house I met many distinguished women. Mrs. J. F. Fields, the widow of the well-known author-publisher; Madame Blaine Bentzam, a writer for French reviews; Miss Sarah Orne Jewett, one of the most charming of New England write is, and others.

My best work in Canada was the conversion to effective voting of my good friend Robert Tyson. For years now he has done yeoman service in the cause, and has corresponded with workers all over the world on the question of electoral reform. I visited Toronto, at the invitation of Mr. William Howland, with whom I had corresponded for years. I was invited to dinner with his father, Sir William Howland, who was the first Lieutenant-Governor of Toronto after the federation of the Dominion. I found it very difficult to remember the names of the many interesting people I met there, although I could recollect the things they spoke about. Mr. Howland took me on with him to an evening garden party—quite a novel form of entertainment for me—where there were other interesting people. One of these, a lady artist who had travelled all round the world, took me on the next afternoon to an at-home at Professor Goldwin Smith's. In a talk I had with this notable man he spoke of his strong desire that Canada should become absorbed in the States; but the feeling in Canada was adverse to such a change. Still, you found Canadians everywhere, for many more men were educated than could find careers in the Dominion. Sir Sandford Fleming, the most ardent proportionalist in Canada, left Toronto on his trip to New Zealand and Australia shortly after I arrived there. I spent a few hours with him, and owed a great deal of my success in the Dominion to his influence. I felt that I had done much good in Canada, and my time was so occupied that the only thing I missed was leisure.

Much of the time in New York was spent in interviews with the various papers. I had a delightful few days at the house of Henry George, and both he and his wife did everything in their power to make my visit pleasant. Indeed, everywhere in America I received the greatest kindness and consideration. I had been 11 months in the States and Canada, and lived the strenuous life to the utmost. I had delivered over 100 lectures, travelled thousands of miles, and met the most interesting people in the world. I felt many regrets on parting with friends, comrades, sympathizers, and fellow-workers. When I reflected that on my arrival in San Francisco I knew only two persons in America in the flesh, and only two more through correspondence, and was able to look back on the hundreds of people who had personally interested me, it seemed as if there was some animal magnetism in the world, and that affinities were drawn together as if by magic.



CHAPTER XVIII.

BRITAIN, THE CONTINENT, AND HOME AGAIN.

I went by steamer to Glasgow, as I found the fares by that route cheaper than to Liverpool. Municipal work in that city was then attracting world-wide attention, and I enquired into the methods of taxation and the management of public works, much to my advantage. The co-operative works at Shields Hall were another source of interest to me. At Peterborough I stayed with Mr. Hare's daughter, Katie, who had married Canon Clayton. Never before did I breathe such an ecclesiastical atmosphere as in that ancient canonry, part of the old monastery, said to be 600 years old. While there I spoke to the Guild of Co-operative Women on "Australia." In Edinburgh I had a drawing-room meeting at the house of Mrs. Muir Dowie, daughter of Robert Chambers and mother of Minnie Muriel Dowie, who wrote "Through the Carpathians," and another at the Fabian Society, both on effective voting. Mrs. Dowie and Priscilla Bright McLaren, sister of John Bright, were both keen on the suffrage, and most interesting women. I had been so much associated with the suffragists in America, with the veteran Susan B. Anthony at their head, that English workers in the cause gave me a warm welcome.

London under the municipal guidance of the County Council was very different from the London I had visited 29 years earlier. Perhaps Glasgow and Birmingham have gone further in municipalizing monopolies than Londoners have, but the vastness of the scale on which London moves makes it more interesting. Cr. Peter Burt, of Glasgow, had worked hard to add publichouses to the list of things under municipal ownership and regulation, and I have always been glad to see the increasing attention paid to the Scandinavian methods of dealing with the drink traffic. I have deplored the division among temperance workers, which makes the prohibitionists hold aloof from this reform, when their aid would at least enable the experiment to be tried. But in spite of all hindrances the world moves on towards better things. It is not now a voice crying in the wilderness. There are many thousands of wise, brave, devoted men and women possessed with the enthusiasm of humanity in every civilized country, and they must prevail. Professor and Mrs. Westlake, the latter of whom was Mr. Hare's eldest daughter, arranged a most successful drawing-room meeting for me at their home, the River House, Chelsea, at which Mr. Arthur Balfour spoke. While he thought effective voting probably suitable for America and Australia, he scarcely saw the necessity for it in England. Party leaders so seldom do like to try it on themselves, but many of them are prepared to experiment on "the other fellow." In this State we find members of the Assembly anxious to try effective voting on the Legislative Council, Federal members on the State House, and vice versa. Other speakers who supported me were Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Leonard (now Lord) Courtney, Mr. Westlake, and Sir John Hall, of New Zealand. The flourishing condition of the Proportional Representation Society in England at present is due to the earnestness of the lastnamed gentlemen, and its extremely able hon. secretary (Mr. John H. Humphreys).

A few days were spent with Miss Jane Hume Clapperton, author of "Scientific Meliorism," and we had an interesting time visiting George Eliot's haunts and friends. Through the Warwickshire lanes—where the high hedges and the great trees at regular intervals made it impossible to see anything beyond, except an occasional gate, reminding me of Mrs. Browning's—

And between the hedgerows green, How we wandered—I and you; With the bowery tops shut in, And the gates that showed the view.

—we saw the homestead known as "Mrs. Poyser's Farm," as it answers so perfectly to the description in "Adam Bede." I was taken to see Mrs. Cash, a younger friend of George Eliot, and took tea with two most interesting, old ladies—one 82, and the other 80—who had befriended the famous authoress when she was poor and stood almost alone. How I grudged the thousands of acres of beautiful agricultural land given up to shooting and hunting! We in Australia have no idea of the extent to which field sports enter into the rural life of England. People excused this love of sport to me on the ground that it is as a safety valve for the energy of idle men. Besides, said one, hunting leads, at any rate, to an appreciation of Nature; but I thought it a queer appreciation of Nature that would lead keen fox hunters to complain of the "stinking" violets that throw the hounds off the scent of the fox. I saw Ascot and Epsom, but fortunately not on a race day. A horse race I have never seen. George Moore's realistic novel "Esther Waters" does not overstate the extent to which betting demoralizes not only the wealthier, but all classes. There is a great pauper school in Sutton, where from 1,600 to 1,800 children are reared and educated. On Derby Day the children go to the side of the railroad, and catch the coppers and silver coins thrown to them by the passengers, and these are gathered together to give the children their yearly treat. But this association in the children's minds of their annual pleasure with Derby Day must, I often think, have a demoralizing tendency.

While in London I slipped in trying to avoid being run down by an omnibus and dislocated my right shoulder. I was fortunate in being the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Petherick at the time. I can never be sufficiently grateful to them for their care of and kindness to me. Only last year I went to Melbourne to meet them both again. It was the occasion of the presentation to the Federal Government of the Petherick Library, and I went over to sign and to witness the splendid deed of gift.

I have left almost to the last of the account of my English visit all mention of the Baconians I met and from whom I gained valuable information in corroboration of the Baconian authorship. In some circles I found that, to suggest that Shakspeare did not write the plays and poems was equal to throwing a bombshell among them. As a Baconian I received an invitation to a picnic at the beautiful country house of Mr. Edwin Lawrence, with whom I had a pleasant talk. The house was built on a part of a royal forest, in which firs and pines were planted at the time of the great Napoleonic wars when timber could not be got from the Baltic and England had to trust to her own hearts of oak and her own growth of pine for masts and planks. Mr. Lawrence had written pamphlets and essays on the Baconian theory, and I found my knowledge of the subject expanding and growing under his intelligent talk. His wife's father (J. Benjamin Smith) had taught Cobden the ethics of free trade. It was through the kind liberality of Miss Florence Davenport Hill that a pamphlet, recording the speeches and results of the voting at River House, Chelsea, was printed and circulated. When I visited Miss Hill and her sister and found them as eager for social and political reform as they had been 29 years earlier, I had another proof of the eternal youth which large and high interests keep within us in spite of advancing years. Miss Davenport Hill had been a member of the London School Board for 15 years, and was reelected after I left England. Years of her life had been devoted to work for the children of the State, and she was a member of the Board of Guardians for the populous union of St. Pancras. Everyone acknowledged the great good that the admission of women to those boards had done. I spent a pleasant time at Toynbee Hall, a University centre, in the poorest part of London, founded by men. Canon and Mrs. Barrett were intensely interested in South Australian work for State children. Similar University centres which I visited in America, like Hull House, in Chicago, were founded by women graduates. Mrs. Fawcett I met several times, but Mrs. Garrett Anderson only once. When the suffrage was granted to the women of South Australia I received a letter of congratulation from Dr. Helen Blackburn, one of the first women to take a medical degree. Nowadays women doctors are accepted as part of our daily life, and it is to these brave pioneers of the women's cause, Drs. Elizabeth Blackwell, Helen Rackburn, Garrett Anderson, and other like noble souls, that the social and political prestige of women has advanced so tremendously all over the English-speaking world. It only remains now for a few women, full of the enthusiasm of humanity and gifted with the power of public speaking, to gain another and important step for the womanhood of the world in the direction of economic freedom. Before leaving England I was gratified at receiving a cheque from Mrs. Westlake, contributed by the English proportionalists, to help me in the cause. This was the second gift of the kind I had received, for my friends in San Francisco had already helped me financially on my way to reform. Socially I liked the atmosphere of America better than that of England, but politically England was infinitely more advanced. Steadily and surely a safer democracy seems to be evolving in the old country than in the Transatlantic Republic. I left England at the end of September, 1894.

My intended visit to Paris was cancelled through the death a short time before of the only friend I wished to meet there, the Baroness Blaze-de-Bury, and I went straight through to Bale. I made a detour to Zurich, where I hoped to see people interested in proportional representation who could speak English. An interesting fellow-worker in the cause was Herr Karl Burkli, to whom I suggested the idea of lecturing with ballots. The oldest advocate of proportional representation on the Continent, M. Ernest Naville, I met at Geneva. In that tiny republic in the heart of Europe, which is the home of experimental legislation, I found effective voting already established in four cantons, and the effect in these cantons had been so good (said Ernest Naville) "that it is only a matter of time to see all the Swiss cantons and the Swiss Federation adopt it." In Zurich Herr Burkli was delighted that they had introduced progressive taxation into the canton, but the effect had been to drive away the wealthy people who came in search of quiet and healthy residence. Progressive taxation has not by any means proved the unmixed blessing which so many of its advocates claim it to be. In New Zealand, we are told, on the best authority, that land monopoly and land jobbery were never so rampant in the Dominion as since the introduction of the progressive land tax. One wondered how the three million Swiss people lived on their little territory, so much occupied by barren mountain, and lakes which supply only a few fish. My Zurich friends told me that it was by their unremitting industry and exceptional thrift, but others said that the foreign visitors who go to the recreation ground of Europe circulate so much money that instead of the prayer "Give us this day our daily bread" the Swiss people ask, "Send us this day one foreigner."

In Italy I saw the most intense culture in the world—no pleasure grounds or deer parks for the wealthy. The whole country looked like a garden with trellised vines and laden trees. Italian wine was grown, principally for home consumption, and that was immense. Prohibitionists would speak to deaf ears there. Wine was not a luxury, but a necessity of life. It made the poor fare of dry bread and polenta (maize porridge) go down more pleasantly. It was the greater abundance of fruit and wine that caused the Italian poorer classes to look healthier than the German. In Germany, which taxed itself to give cheap beet sugar to the British consumer, the people paid 6d. a lb. for the little they could afford to use; and in Italy it was nearly 8d.—a source of revenue to the Governments, but prohibitive to the poor. There were no sweet shops in Italy. England only could afford such luxuries. I visited at Siena a home for deaf mutes, and found that each child had wine at two of its daily meals—about a pint a day. It was the light-red wine of the country, with little alcohol in it; but those who warn us against looking on the wine when it is red will be shocked to hear of these little ones drinking it like milk. Those, however, who live in Italy say that not once a year do they see any one drunk in the streets.

I reached South Australia on December 12, 1894, after an absence of 20 months. I found the women's suffrage movement wavering in the balance. It had apparently come with a rush—as unexpected as it was welcome to those whose strenuous exertions at last seemed likely to be crowned with success. Though sympathetic to the cause, I had always been regarded as a weakkneed sister by the real workers. I had failed to see the advantage of having a vote that might leave me after an election a disfranchised voter, instead of an unenfranchised woman. People talk of citizens being disfranchised for the Legislative Council when they really mean that they are unenfranchised. You can scarcely be disfranchised if you have never been enfranchised; and I have regarded the enfranchisement of the people on the roll as more important for the time being than adding new names to the rolls. This would only tend to increase the disproportion between the representative and the represented. But I rejoiced when the Women's Suffrage Bill was carried, for I believe that women have thought more and accepted the responsibilities of voting to a greater extent than was ever expected of them. During the week I was accorded a welcome home in the old Academy of Music, Rundle street, where I listened with embarrassment to the avalanche of eulogium that overwhelmed me. "What a good thing it is, Miss Spence, that you have only one idea," a gentleman once said to me on my country tour. He wished thus to express his feeling concerning my singleness of purpose towards effective voting. But at this welcome home I felt that others realized what I had often said myself. It is really because I have so many ideas for making life better, wiser, and pleasanter all of which effective voting will aid—that I seem so absorbed in the one reform. My opinions on other matters I give for what they are worth—for discussion, for acceptance or rejection. My opinions on equitable representation I hold absolutely, subject to criticism of methods but impregnable as to principle.



CHAPTER XIX.

PROGRESS OF EFFECTIVE VOTING.

My journalistic work after my return was neither so regular nor so profitable as before I left Adelaide. The bank failures had affected me rather badly, and financially my outlook was anything but rosy in the year 1895. There was, however, plenty of public work open to me, and, in addition to the many lectures I gave in various parts of the State on effective voting, I became a member of the Hospital Commission, appointed that year by the Kingston Government to enquire into the trouble at the Adelaide Hospital. That same year saw a decided step taken in connection with effective voting, and in July a league was formed, which has been in existence ever since. I was appointed the first President, my brother John became secretary pro tem, and Mr. A. W. Piper the first treasurer. I felt at last that the reform was taking definite shape, and looked hopefully to its future. The following year was especially interesting to the women of South Australia, and, indeed, to suffragists all over the world, for at the general election of 1896 women, for the first time in Australia, had the right to vote. New Zealand had preceded us with this reform, but the first election in this State found many women voters fairly well equipped to accept their responsibilities as citizens of the State. But in the full realization by the majority of women of their whole duties of citizenship I have been distinctly disappointed. Not that they have been on the whole less patriotic and less zealous than men voters; but, like their brothers, they have allowed their interest in public affairs to stop short at the act of voting, as if the right to vote were the beginning and the end of political life. There has been too great a tendency on the part of women to allow reform work—particularly women's branches of it—to be done by a few disinterested and public-spirited women. Not only is the home the centre of woman's sphere, as it should be, but in too many cases it is permitted to be its limitation. The larger social life has been ignored, and women have consequently failed to have the effect on public life of which their political privilege is capable.

At the close of a second lecturing tour through the State, during which I visited and spoke at most of the village settlements, I received an invitation from the Women's Land Reform League to attend a social gathering at the residence of Miss Sutherland, Clark street, Norwood. The occasion was my seventy-first birthday, and my friends had chosen that day (October 31, 1896) to mark their appreciation of my public services. There were about 30 of the members present, all interesting by reason of their zealous care for the welfare of the State. Their President (Mrs. C. Proud) presented me, on behalf of the members, with a lady's handbag, ornamented with a silver plate, bearing my name, the date of the presentation, and the name of the cause for which I stood. From that day the little bag has been the inseparable companion of all my wanderings, and a constant reminder of the many kind friends who, with me, had realized that "love of country is one of the loftiest virtues which the Almighty has planted in the human heart." That association was the first in South Australia to place effective voting on its platform.

My long comradeship with Mrs. A. H. Young began before the close of the year. A disfranchised voter at her first election, she was driven farther afield than the present inadequate system of voting to look for a just electoral method. She found it in effective voting, and from that time devoted herself to the cause. Early in 1897 Mrs. Young was appointed the first honorary secretary of the league. January of the same year found us stirred to action by the success of Sir Edward Braddon's first Bill for proportional representation in Tasmania. Though limited in its application to the two chief cities of the island State, the experiment was wholly successful. We had our first large public meeting in the Co-operative Hall in January, and carried a resolution protesting against the use of the block vote for the Federal Convention elections. A deputation to the acting Premier (Mr.—afterwards Sir Frederick—Holder) was arranged for the next morning. But we were disappointed in the result of our mission, for Mr. Holder pointed out that the Enabling Act distinctly provided for every elector having 10 votes, and effective voting meant a single transferable vote. I had written and telegraphed to the Hon. C. C. Kingston when the Enabling Act was being drafted to beg him to consider effective voting as the basis of election; but he did not see it then, nor did he ever see it. In spite, however, of the short sightedness of party leaders, events began to move quickly.

Our disappointment over the maintenance of the block vote for the election of 10 delegates to the Federal Convention led to my brother John's suggestion that I should become a candidate. Startling as the suggestion was, so many of my friends supported it that I agreed to do so. I maintained that the fundamental necessity of a democratic Constitution such as we hoped would evolve from the combined efforts of the ablest men in the Australian States was a just system of representation and it was as the advocate of effective voting that I took my stand. My personal observation in the United States and Canada had impressed me with the dangers inseparable from the election of Federal Legislatures by local majorities—sometimes by minorities—where money and influence could be employed, particularly where a line in a tariff spelt a fortune to a section of the people, in the manipulation of the floating vote. Parties may boast of their voting strength and their compactness, but their voting strength under the present system of voting is only as strong as its weakest link, discordant or discontented minorities, will permit it to be. The stronger a party is in the Legislature the more is expected from it by every little section of voters to whom it owes its victory at the polls. The impelling force of responsibility which makes all Governments "go slow" creates the greatest discontent among impatient followers of the rank and file, and where a few votes may turn the scale at any general election a Government is often compelled to choose between yielding to the demands of its more clamorous followers at the expense of the general taxpayer or submitting to a Ministerial defeat.

As much as we may talk of democracy in Australia, we are far from realizing a truly democratic ideal. A State in a pure democracy draws no nice and invidious distinctions between man and man. She disclaims the right of favouring either property, education, talent, or virtue. She conceives that all alike have an interest in good government, and that all who form the community, of full age and untainted by crime, should have a right to their share in the representation. She allows education to exert its legitimate power through the press; talent in every department of business, property in its social and material advantages; virtue and religion to influence public opinion and the public conscience. But she views all men as politically equal, and rightly so, if the equality is to be as real in operation as in theory. If the equality is actual in the representation of the citizens—truth and virtue, being stronger than error and vice, and wisdom being greater than folly, when a fair field is offered—the higher qualities subdue the lower and make themselves felt in every department of the State. But if the representation from defective machinery is not equal, the balance is overthrown, and neither education, talent, nor virtue can work through public opinion so as to have any beneficial influence on politics. We know that in despotisms and oligarchies, where the majority are unrepresented and the few extinguish the many, independence of thought is crushed down, talent is bribed to do service to tyranny, education is confined to a privileged class and denied to the people, property is sometimes pillaged and sometimes flattered, and even virtue is degraded by lowering its field and making subservience appear to be patience and loyalty, and religion is not unfrequently made the handmaid of oppression. Taxes fall heavily on the poor for the benefit of the rich, and the only check proceeds from the fear of rebellion. When, on the other hand, the majority extinguishes the minority, the evil effects are not so apparent. The body oppressed is smaller and generally wealthier, with many social advantages to draw off attention from the political injustice under which they suffer; but there is the same want of sympathy between class and class, moral courage is rare, talent is perverted, genius is overlooked, education is general, but superficial, and press and Pulpit often timid in exposing or denouncing popular errors. An average standard of virtue is all that is aimed at, and when no higher mark is set up there is great fear of falling below the average. Therefore it is incumbent on all States to look well to it that their representative systems really secure the political equality they all profess to give, for until that is done democracy has had no fair trial.

In framing a new constitution the opportunity arose for laying the foundation of just representation, and, had I been elected, my first and last thought would have been given to the claims of the whole people to electoral justice. But the 7,500 votes which I received left me far enough from the lucky 10. Had Mr. Kingston not asserted both publicly and privately that, if elected, I could not constitutionally take my seat, I might have done better. There were rumours even that my nomination paper would be rejected. But to obviate this, Mrs. Young, who got it filled in, was careful to see that no name was on it that had no right there, and its presentation was delayed till five minutes before the hour of noon, in order that no time would be left to upset its validity. From a press cutting on the declaration of the poll I cull this item of news—"Several unexpected candidates were announced, but the only nomination which evoked any expressions of approval was that of Miss Spence." I was the first woman in Australia to seek election in a political contest. From the two main party lists I was, of course, excluded, but in the list of the "10 best men" selected by a Liberal organization my name appeared. When the list was taken to the printer—who, I think, happened to be the late Federal member, Mr. James Hutchison—he objected to the heading of the "10 best men," as one of them was a woman. He suggested that my name should be dropped, and a man's put in its place. "You can't say Miss Spence is one of the '10 best men.' Take her name out." "Not say she's one of the '10 best men?'" the Liberal organizer objected, "Why she's the best man of the lot." I had not expected to be elected, but I did expect that my candidature would help effective voting, and I am sure it did. Later the league arranged a deputation to Mr. Kingston, to beg him to use his influence for the adoption of the principle in time for the first Federal elections. We foresaw, and prophesied what has actually occurred—the monopoly of representation by one party in the Senate, and the consequent disfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters throughout the Commonwealth. But, as before, Mr. Kingston declined to see the writing on the wall. The Hon. D. M. Charleston was successful in carrying through the Legislative Council a motion in favour of its application to Federal elections, but Mr. Wynn in the Lower House had a harder row to hoe, and a division was never taken.

Mrs. Young and I spent a pleasant evening at Government House in July of the same year, as Sir Fowell and Lady Buxton had expressed a desire to understand the system. In addition to a large house party, several prominent citizens were present, and all were greatly interested. On leaving at 11 o'clock we found the gate closed against us, as the porter was evidently unaware that visitors were being entertained. We were amused at the indignation of the London-bred butler, who, on coming to our rescue, cried with a perfect Cockney accent, "Gyte, gyte, yer don't lock gytes till visitors is off." This was a memorable year in the annals of our cause, for on his election to fill an extraordinary vacancy for North Adelaide Mr. Glynn promised to introduce effective voting into the House. This he did in July by tabling a motion for the adoption of the principle, and we were pleased to find in Mr. Batchelor, now the Minister for External Affairs in the Federal Government, a stanch supporter. Among the many politicians who have blown hot and cold on the reform as occasion arose, Mr. Batchelor has steadily and consistently remained a supporter of what he terms "the only system that makes majority rule possible."

When Mrs. Young and I began our work together the question was frequently asked why women alone were working for effective voting? The answer was simple. There were few men with leisure in South Australia, and, if there were, the leisured man was scarcely likely to take up reform work. When I first seized hold of this reform women as platform speakers were unheard of. Indeed, the prejudice was so strong against women in public life that although I wrote the letters to The Melbourne Argus it was my brother John who was nominally the correspondent. So for 30 years I wrote anonymously to the press on this subject. I waited for some man to come forward and do the platform work for me. We women are accused of waiting and waiting for the coming man, but often he doesn't come at all; and oftener still, when he does come, we should be a great deal better without him. In this case he did not come at all, and I started to do the work myself; and, just because I was a woman working singlehanded in the cause, Mrs. Young joined me in the crusade against inequitable representation. For many years, however, the cause has counted to its credit men speakers and demonstrators of ability and talent all over the State, who are carrying the gospel of representative reform into every camp, both friendly and hostile.

It was said of Gibbon when his autobiography was published that he did not know the difference between himself and the Roman Empire. I have sometimes thought that the same charge might be levelled against me with regard to effective voting; but association with a reform for half a century sometimes makes it difficult to separate the interests of the person from the interests of the cause. Following on my return from America effective voting played a larger part than ever in my life. I had come back cheered by the earnestness and enthusiasm of American reformers, and I found the people of my adopted country more than ever prepared to listen to my teaching. Parties had become more clearly defined, and the results of our system of education were beginning to tell, I think, in the increased interest taken by individuals as well as by societies in social and economic questions. I found interesting people everywhere, in every mode of life, and in every class of society. My friends sometimes accused me of judging people's intelligence by the interest they took in effective voting; but, although this may have been true to a certain extent, it was not wholly correct. Certainly I felt more drawn to effective voters, but there are friendships I value highly into which my special reform work never enters. Just as the more recent years of my life have been coloured by the growth of the movement which means more to me than anything else in the world, so must the remaining chapters of this narrative bear the imprint of its influence.



CHAPTER XX.

WIDENING INTERESTS.

During this period my work on the State Children's Council continued, and I never found time hang heavily on my hands; so that when Mr. Kingston met me one day later in the year, and told me he particularly wished me to accept an appointment as a member of the Destitute Board, I hesitated. "I am too old," I objected. "No, no, Miss Spence," he replied laughingly, "it is only we who grow old—you have the gift of perpetual youth." But I was nearly 72, and at any rate I thought I should first consult my friends. I found them all eager that I should accept the position. I had agitated long and often for the appointment of women on all public boards, particularly where both sexes came under treatment, and I accepted the post. Although often I have found the work tiring, I have never regretted the step I took in joining the board. Experience has emphasized my early desire that two women at least should occupy positions on it. I hope that future Governments will rectify the mistake of past years by utilizing to a greater extent the valuable aid of capable and sympathetic women in a branch of public work for which they are peculiarly fitted. Early in my career as a member of the board I found grave defects in the daily bill of fare, and set myself to the task of remedying them as far as lay in my power. For 30 years the same kind of soup, day in and day out, followed by the eternal and evergreen cabbage as a vegetable, in season and out of season, found its way to the table. My own tastes and mode of life were simplicity personified, but my stomach revolted against a dietary as unvaried as it was unappetizing. An old servant who heard that I attended the Destitute Asylum every week was loud in her lamentations that "poor dear Miss Spence was so reduced that she had to go to the Destitute every week for rations!" My thankfulness that she had misconceived the position stirred me to leave no stone unturned for the betterment of the destitute bill of fare. I was successful, and the varied diet now enjoyed bears witness to the humanitarian views of all the members of the board, who were as anxious to help in the reform as I was. My heart has always gone out to the poor old folk whose faces bear the impress of long years of strenuous toil and who at the close of life at least should find a haven of restfulness and peace in the State for whose advancement they have laboured in the past.

She was a witty woman who divided autobiographies into two classes... autobiographies and ought-not-to-biographies—but I am sure she never attempted to write one herself. There is so much in one's life that looms large from a personal point of view about which other people would care little, and the difficulty often arises, not so much about what to put in as what to leave out.

How much my personal interests had widened during my absence from home could be gauged somewhat by the enormous increase in my correspondence after my return. American, Canadian, English, and Continental correspondents have kept me for many years well informed on reform and kindred subjects; and the letters I have received, and the replies they have drawn from me, go far to make me doubt the accuracy of the accepted belief that "letter writing has become a lost art." A full mind with a facile pen makes letter writing a joy, and both of these attributes I think I may fairly claim. My correspondence with Alfred Cridge was kept up till his death a few years ago, and his son, following worthily in the footsteps of a noble father, has taken up the broken threads of the lifework of my friend, and is doing his utmost to carry it to a successful issue. My love of reading, which has been a characteristic feature of my life, found full scope for expression in the piles of books which reached us from all parts of the world. It has always been my desire to keep abreast of current literature, and this, by means of my book club and other sources, I was able to do. Sometimes my friends from abroad sent me copies of their own publications, Dr. Bayard Holmes invariably forwarding to me a presentation copy of his most valuable treatises on medical subjects. Mrs. Stetson's poems and economic writings have always proved a source of inspiration to me, and I have distributed her books wherever I have thought they would be appreciated. Just at this time my financial position became brighter. I was fortunate in being able to dispose of my two properties in East Adelaide, and the purchasing of an annuity freed me entirely from money and domestic worries. Perhaps the greatest joy of all was that I was once more able to follow my charitable inclinations by giving that little mite which, coming opportunely, gladdens the heart of the disconsolate widow or smoothes the path of the struggling worker. Giving up my home entirely, I went to live with my dear friend Mrs. Baker, at Osmond terrace, where, perhaps, I spent the most restful period of a somewhat eventful life.

The inauguration of a Criminological Society in Adelaide was a welcome sign to me of the growing public interest in methods of prison discipline and treatment. I was one of the foundation members of the society, and attended every meeting during its short existence. My one contribution to the lectures delivered under its auspices was on "Heredity and Environment." This was a subject in which I had long been interested, holding the view that environment had more to do with the building up of character than heredity had to do with its decadence. How much or how little truth there is in the cynical observation that the only believers in heredity nowadays are the fathers of very clever sons I am not prepared to say. I do say, however, that with the cruel and hopeless law of heredity as laid down by Zola and Ibsen I have little sympathy. According to these pessimists, who ride heredity to death, we inherit only the vices, the weaknesses, and the diseases of our ancestors. If this, however, were really the case, the world would be growing worse and not better, as it assuredly is, with every succeeding generation. The contrary view taken of the matter by Ibsen's fellowcountryman, Bjornsen, appears to me to be so much more commonsense and humanizing. He holds that if we know that our ancestors drank and gambled to excess, or were violent-tempered or immoral, we can quite easily avoid the pitfall, knowing it to be there. Too readily wrongdoers are prepared to lay their failings at the door of ancestors, society, or some other blamable source, instead of attributing them, as they should do, to their own selfish and weak indulgence and lack of self-control. Heredity, though an enormous factor in our constitution, need not be regarded as an over-mastering fate, for each human being has an almost limitless parentage to draw upon. Each child has both a father and a mother, and two grandparents on both sides, increasing as one goes back. But, besides drawing on a much wider ancestry than the immediate parents, we have more than we inherit, or where could the law of progress operate? Each generation, each child who is born, comes into a slightly different world, fed by more experience, blown upon by fresh influences. And each individual comes into the world, not with a body merely, but with a soul; and this soul is susceptible to impressions, not only from the outer material world but from the other souls also impressed by the old and the new, by the material and the ideal.

"The History of the Jukes" is continually cited as proving the power and force of heredity. Most people who read the book through, however, instead of merely accepting allusions one-sided and defective to it, see clearly that it forms the strongest argument for change of environment that ever was brought forward. The assumed name of Jukes is given to the descendants of a worthless woman who emigrated to America upwards of a century and a half ago, and from whom hundreds of criminals, paupers, and prostitutes have descended. But how were the Jukes' descendants dealt with during this period? No helping hand removed the children from their vicious and criminal surroundings known as one of the crime-cradles of the State of New York. Neither church nor school took them under its protecting care. Born and reared in the haunts of vice and crime, nothing but viciousness and criminality could be expected as a result. Without going, so far as a wellknown ex-member of our State Legislature, whose antagonism to the humanitarian treatment of prisoners led him to the belief that "there wasn't nothin' in 'erry-ditty,' it was all tommy rot," I still hold to the belief that environment plays the larger part in the formation of character. Every phase of criminal reform is, I candidly admit, dealing with effects rather than causes. Effects, however, must be dealt with, and the more humanely they are dealt with the better for society at large. So long as society shuts its eyes to the social conditions under which the masses of the people live, move, and have their being as tending towards lowering rather than uplifting the individual and the community, the supply of cases for criminal treatment will unfortunately show little tendency to decrease. The work before reformers of the world is to prevent the creation of criminals by changing the environment of those with criminal tendencies as well as to seek to alleviate the resulting disease by methods of criminal reform.

Many interesting lectures were given by prominent citizens under the auspices of the society, which did a great deal to awaken the public conscience on the important question of criminal reform. The Rev. J. Day Thompson, who was then in the zenith of his intellectual power and a noble supporter of all things that tended to the uplifting of humanity, dealt with the land question in relation to crime. He gave a telling illustration of his point—which I thought equally applicable to the question of environment in relation to prison reform—that no permanent good could result from social legislation until society recognised and dealt with the root of the social evil, the land question. "In a lunatic asylum," he said, "it is the custom to test the sanity of patients by giving them a ladle with which to empty a tub of water standing under a running tap. 'How do you decide?' the warder was asked. 'Why, them as isn't idiots stops the tap.'" It was the Rev. J. Day Thompson who first called me the "Grand Old Woman" of South Australia. When he left Adelaide for the wider sphere of service open to him in England I felt that we had lost one of the most cultured and able men who had ever come among us, and one whom no community could lose without being distinctly the poorer for his absence.

Just at this time the visit of Dr. and Mrs. Mills created a little excitement in certain circles. Their lectures on Christian science, both public and private, were wonderfully well attended, and I missed few of them. I have all my life endeavoured to keep an open mind on these questions, and have been prepared to accept new ideas and new modes of thought. But, although I found much that was charming in the lectures that swayed the minds of so many of my friends, I found little to convince me that Christian scientists were right and the rest of the world wrong in their interpretation of the meaning of life. So far as the cultivation of will power, as it is called, is concerned, I have no quarrel with those who maintain that a power of self-control is the basis of human happiness. So far as the will can be trained to obey only those instincts that tend to the growth and maintenance of self-respect—to prevent the subordination of our better feelings to the overpowering effects of passion, greed, or injustice—it must help to the development of one of the primary necessities of a sane existence. When, however, the same agency is brought to bear on the treatment of diseases in any shape or form I find my faith wavering. Though there may be more things in earth and heaven than are dreamed of in my philosophy, I was not prepared to follow the teachings set before us by the interpreters of this belief, whose visit had made an interesting break in the lives of many people. Truth I find everywhere expressed, goodness in all things; but I neither look for nor expect perfection in any one thing the world has ever produced. "Tell me where God is," a somewhat, cynical sceptic asked of a child. "Tell me where He is not," replied the child; and the same thing applies to goodness. Do not tell me where goodness is, but point out to, me, if you can, where it is not. It is for each one to find out for himself where the right path lies, and to follow it with all his strength of mind and of purpose. Pippa's song, "God's in His heaven-all's right with the world," does not mean that the time has come for us to lay down our arms in the battle of right against wrong. No! no; it is an inspiration for us to gird our loins afresh, to "right the wrongs that need resistance;" for, God being in His heaven, and the world itself being right, makes it so much easier to correct mistakes that are due to human agencies and shortcomings only.

I found time to spend a pleasant week at Victor Harbour with my friends, Mr. and Mrs. John Wyles. I remember one day being asked whether I was not sorry I never married. "No," I replied, "for, although I often envy my friends the happiness they find in their children, I have never envied them their husbands." I think we must have been in a frivolous mood; for a lady visitor, who was present, capped my remark with the statement that she was quite sure Miss Spence was thankful that when she died she would not be described as the "relic" of any man. It was the same lady who on another occasion, when one of the juvenile members of the party asked whether poets had to pay for poetical licence, wittily replied, "No, my dear, but their readers do!" Although so much of my time has been spent in public work, I have by no means neglected or despised the social side of life. Visits to my friends have always been delightful to me, and I have felt as much interested in the domestic virtues of my many acquaintances as I have been an admirer of their grasp of literature, politics, or any branch of the arts or sciences in which they have been interested. This seaside visit had been a welcome break in a year that had brought me a new occupation as a member of the Destitute Board, had given me the experience of a political campaign, had witnessed the framing of the Constitution for the Commonwealth 'neath the Southern Cross, and had seen effective voting advance from the academic stage into the realm of practical politics. During the year Mrs. Young and I addressed together 26 meetings on this subject. One of the most interesting was at the Blind School, North Adelaide. The keenness with which this audience gripped every detail of the explanation showed us how splendidly they had risen above their affliction. I was reminded of Helen Keller, the American girl, who at the age of 21 months had lost sight and hearing, and whom I had met in Chicago during my American visit, just before she took her degree at Harvard University.

To all peacelovers the years from 1898 to 1901 were shadowed by the South African war. The din of battle was in our ears only to a less degree than in those of our kinsmen in the mother country. War has always been abhorrent to me, and there was the additional objection to my mind in the case of the South African war in that it was altogether unjustified. Froude's chapters on South Africa had impressed me on the publication of his book "Oceana," after his visit here in the seventies. His indictment of England for her treatment of the Boers from the earliest days of her occupation of Cape Colony was too powerful to be ignored. I felt it to be impossible that so great a historian as Froude should make such grave charges on insufficient evidence. The annexation of 1877, so bitterly condemned by him, followed by the treaty of peace of 1881, with its famous "suzerainty" clause, was, I think, but a stepping stone to the war which was said to have embittered the last years of the life of Queen Victoria. The one voice raised in protest against the annexation of 1877 in the British House of Commons was that of Mr. Leonard (now Lord) Courtney. Not afraid to stand alone, though all the world were against him, the war at the close of the century found Leonard Courtney again taking his stand against the majority of his countrymen, and this time it cost him his Parliamentary seat. I have often felt proud that the leadership of proportional representation in England should have fallen into the hands of so morally courageous a man as Leonard Courtney has invariably proved himself to be.

We are apt to pride ourselves on the advance we have made in our civilization; but our self-glorification received a rude shock at the feelings of intolerance and race hatred that the war brought forth. Freedom of speech became the monopoly of those who supported the war, and the person who dared to express an opinion which differed from that of the majority needed a great deal more than the ordinary allowance of moral courage. Unfortunately the intolerance so characteristic of that period is a feature, to a greater or lesser extent, of every Parliamentary election in the Commonwealth. The clause in the Federal Electoral Act which makes disturbance of a political meeting a penal offence is a curious reflection on a so-called democratic community. But, though its justification can scarcely be denied even by the partisans of the noisier elements in a political crowd, its existence must be deplored by every right-minded and truehearted citizen. In Miss Rose Scott I found a sympathizer on this question of the war; and one of the best speeches I ever heard her make was on Peace and Arbitration. "Mafeking Day" was celebrated while we were in Sydney, and I remember how we three—Miss Scott, Mrs. Young, and I—remained indoors the whole day, at the charming home of our hostess, on Point Piper road. The black band of death and desolation was too apparent for us to feel that we could face the almost ribald excesses of that day. I felt the war far less keenly than did my two friends; but it was bad even for me. No one called, and the only companions of our chosen solitude were the books we all loved so much, and

The secret sympathy, The silver link, the silken tie, Which heart to heart and mind to mind, In body and in soul can bind.

I had hoped that the Women's National Council, a branch of which was formed in Adelaide a few years later, would have made a great deal of the question of peace and arbitration, just as other branches have done all over the world; and when the Peace Society was inaugurated a short time ago I was glad to be able to express my sympathy with the movement by becoming a member. As I was returning from a lecturing tour in the south during this time, an old Scotch farm-wife came into the carriage where I had been knitting in solitude. She was a woman of strong feelings, and was bitterly opposed to the war. We chatted on the subject for a time, getting along famously, until she discovered that I was Miss Spence. "But you are a Unitarian!" she protested in a shocked tone. I admitted the fact. "Oh, Miss Spence," she went on, "how can you be so wicked as to deny the divinity of Christ?" I explained to her what Unitarianism was, but she held dubiously aloof for a time. Then we talked of other things. She told me of many family affairs, and when she left me at the station she said, "All, well, Miss Spence, I've learned something this morning, and that is that a Unitarian can be just as good and honest as other folk."



CHAPTER XXI

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION AND FEDERATION.

In the debates of the Federal Convention I was naturally much interested. Many times I regretted my failure to win a seat when I saw how, in spite of warnings against, and years of lamentable experience of, a vicious system of voting, the members of the Convention went calmly on their way, accepting as a matter of course the crude and haphazard methods known to them, the unscientific system of voting so dear to the heart of the "middling" politician and the party intriguer. I believe Mr. Glynn alone raised his voice in favour of proportional representation, in the Convention, as he has done consistently in every representative assembly of which he has been a member. Instead of seeing to it that the foundations of the Commonwealth were "broad based upon the people's will" by the adoption of effective voting, and thus maintaining the necessary connection between the representative and the represented, these thinkers for the people at the very outset of federation sowed the seeds of future discontent and Federal apathy. Faced with disfranchisement for three or six years, possibly for ever—so long as the present system of voting remains—it is unreasonable to expect from the people as a whole that interest in the national well-being which alone can lead to the safety of a progressive nation.

Proportional representation was for long talked of as a device for representing minorities. It is only in recent years that the real scope of the reform has been recognised. By no other means than the adoption of the single transferable vote can the rule of the majority obtain. The fundamental principle of proportional representation is that majorities must rule, but that minorities shall be adequately represented. An intelligent minority of representatives has great weight and influence. Its voice can be heard. It can fully and truly express the views of the voters it represents. It can watch the majority and keep it straight. These clear rights of the minority are denied by the use of the multiple vote. It has also been asked—Can a Government be as strong as it needs to be when—besides the organized Ministerial party and the recognised Opposition—there may be a larger number of independent members than at present who may vote either way? It is quite possible for a Government to be too strong, and this is especially dangerous in Australia, where there are so many of what are known as optional functions of government undertaken and administered by the Ministry of the day, resting on a majority in the Legislature. To maintain this ascendancy concessions are made to the personal interests of members or to local or class interests of their constituencies at the cost of the whole country.

When introducing proportional representation into the Belgian Chamber the Prime Minister (M. Bernhaert) spoke well and forcibly on the subject of a strong Government:—

I, who have the honour of speaking to you to-day in the name of the Government and who have at my back the strongest majority that was ever known in Belgium, owe it to truth to say that our opinions have not a corresponding preponderance in the country; and I believe that, if that majority were always correctly expressed, we should gain in stability what we might lose in apparent strength. Gentlemen, in the actual state of things, to whom belongs the Government of the country? It belongs to some two or three thousand electors, who assuredly are neither the best nor the most intelligent, who turn the scale at each of our scrutin de liste elections. I see to the right and to the left two large armies—Catholics and Liberals—of force almost equal, whom nothing would tempt to desert their standard, who serve it with devotion and from conviction. Well, these great armies do not count, or scarcely count. On the day of battle it is as if they do not exist. What counts, what decides, what triumphs, is another body of electors altogether—a floating body too often swayed by their passions, by their prejudices; or, worse still, by their interests. These are our masters, and according as they veer from right to left, or from left to right, the Government of the country changes, and its history takes a new direction. Gentlemen, is it well that it should be so? Is it well that this country should be at the mercy of such contemptible elements as these?

How often have I longed to see a Premier in this, my adopted country, rise to such fervid heights of patriotism as this?

M. Bernhaert is right. It is the party Government that is essentially the weak Government. It cannot afford to estrange or offend any one who commands votes. It is said that every prominent politician in the British House of Commons is being perpetually tempted and tormented by his friends not to be honest, and perpetually assailed by his enemies in order to be made to appear to be dishonest. The Opposition is prepared to trip up the Ministry at every step. It exaggerates mistakes, misrepresents motives, and combats measures which it believes to be good, if these are brought forward by its opponents. It bullies in public and undermines in secret. It is always ready to step into the shoes of the Ministry, to undergo similar treatment. This is the sort of strength which is supposed to be imperilled if the nation were equitably represented in the Legislature. In the present state of the world, especially in the Australian States, where the functions of government have multiplied and are multiplying, it is of the first importance that the administration should be watched from all sides, and not merely from the point of view of those who wish to sit on the Treasury benches. The right function of the Opposition is to see that the Government does the work of the country well. The actual practice of the Opposition is to try to prevent it from doing the country's work at all. In order that government should be honest, intelligent, and economical, it needs helpful criticism rather than unqualified opposition; and this criticism may be expected from the less compact and more independent ranks in a legislative body which truly represents all the people. Party discipline, which is almost inevitable in the present struggle for ascendancy or defeat, is the most undemocratic agency in the world. It is rather by liberating all votes and allowing them to group themselves according to conviction that a real government of the people by the people can be secured. When I look back on the intention of the framers of the Commonwealth Constitution to create in the Senate a States' rights House I am amazed at the remoteness of the intention from the achievement. The Senate is as much a party House as is the House of Representatives. Nothing, perhaps, describes the position better than the epigrammatic if somewhat triumphant statement of a Labour Senator some time ago. "The Senate was supposed to be a place where the radical legislation of the Lower Chamber could be cooled off, but they had found that the saucer was hotter than the cup."

The long illness and death of my ward, Mrs. Hood, once more gave to my life a new direction. History was repeating itself. Just as 40 years earlier Mrs. Hood and her brothers had been left in my charge on the death of their mother, so once again a dying mother begged me to accept the guardianship of her three orphan children. Verging as they were on the threshold of manhood and womanhood, they scarcely needed the care and attention due to smaller children, but I realized I think to the full, what so many parents have realized—that the responsibilities for the training of children of an older growth are greater and more burdensome than the physical care of the infant. The family belongings were gathered in from the four quarters of the globe to which they had been scattered on my giving up housekeeping, and we again began a family life in Kent Town. Soon after we had settled, the motion in charge of the Hon. D. M. Charleston in favour of the adoption of proportional representation for Federal elections was carried to a successful issue in the Legislative Council. The Hon. A. A. Kirkpatrick suggested the advisableness of preparing a Bill at this stage. A motion simply affirming a principle, he said, was not likely to carry the cause much further, as it left the question of the application of the principle too much an open one. The league, he thought, should have something definite to put before candidates, so that a definite answer could be obtained from them. In New Zealand, Mr. O'Regan, a well-known solicitor, had also introduced into the House of Representatives during 1898 a Bill for the adoption of effective voting. Unfortunately members had become wedded to single electorates, and when a change was made it was to second ballots—a system of voting which has for long been discredited on the Continent. In France, it was stated in the debates on electoral reform in 1909, for 20 years, under second ballots, only once had a majority outside been represented by a majority inside the Chamber, and the average representation for the two decades had amounted to only 45 per cent. of the voters. Writing to me after the New Zealand elections in 1909, the Hon. George Fowlds (Minister of Education), who has long supported effective voting, said, "The only result of the second ballot system in New Zealand has been to strengthen the movement in favour of proportional representation." And Mr. Paul, a Labour member in the Dominion, is making every effort to have effective voting included in the platform of the New Zealand Labour Party. Further encouragement to continue our work came when Belgium adopted the principle of proportional representation in 1898.

The closing year of the century found the Effective Voting League in the thick of its first election campaign. There is little doubt that the best time for advancing a political reform is during an election, and it was interesting to note how many candidates came to our support. We had an interesting meeting at Parliament House for members just about that time. An opponent of the reform, who was present, complained that we were late in beginning our meeting. "We always begin punctually under the present system," he remarked. "Yes," some one replied, "but we always finish so badly." "Oh, I always finish well enough," was the pert rejoinder; "I generally come out on top." "Ah," retorted the other, "I was thinking of the electors." But the doubter did not come out on top at a subsequent election, and his defeat was probably the means of his discovering defects in the old system that no number of successes would have led him into acknowledging. From the two or three members who had supported Mr. Glynn in the previous Parliament we increased our advocates in the Assembly during the campaign to 14. The agitation had been very persistent among the electors, and their approval of the reform was reflected in the minds of their representatives. We inaugurated during that year the series of citizens' meetings convened by the Mayors of the city and suburbs, which has been so successful a feature of our long campaign for electoral justice, and at the present time very few of the mayoral chairs are occupied by men who are not keen supporters of effective voting.

The Hon. Theodore Bruce's connection with the reform dates from that year, when he presided at a meeting in the Adelaide Town Hall during the temporary absence of the Mayor. A consistent supporter of effective voting from that time, it was only natural that when in May, 1909, the candidature of Mr. Bruce (who was then and is now a Vice-President of the league). for a seat in the Legislative Council, gave us an opportunity for working for his return, against a candidate who had stated that he was not satisfied with the working of the system of effective voting, we availed ourselves of it. So much has been written and said about the attitude of the league with regard to Parliamentary candidates that, as its President, I feel that I ought to take this opportunity of stating our reasons for that attitude. From its inception the league has declined to recognise parties in a contest at all. Its sole concern has been, and must be to support effective voters, to whatever party they may belong. To secure the just representation of the whole electorate of whatever size, is the work of the Effective Voting League, and, whatever the individual opinions of the members may be, as an official body they cannot help any candidate who opposes the reform for which they stand.

I remember meeting at a political meeting during a subsequent general election a lady whom I had known as an almost rabid Kingstonian. But the party had failed to find a position for her son in the Civil Service, although their own sons were in that way satisfactorily provided for. So she had thrown in her lot with the other side, which at the time happened to gain a few seats, and the lady was quite sure that her influence had won the day for her former opponents. Leaning forward to whisper as if her next remark were too delicate for the ears of a gentleman sitting near, she said, "Do you know, I don't believe the Premier has any backbone!" I laughed, and said that I thought most people held the same belief. To my amusement and astonishment she then asked quite seriously, "Do you think that is why he stoops so much?" There was no doubt in her mind that the missing back bone had reference to the physical and not to the moral malformation of the gentleman in question.



CHAPTER XXII.

A VISIT TO NEW SOUTH WALES.

Early in the year 1900 the Hon. B. R. Wise, then Attorney-General of New South Wales, suggested a campaign for effective voting in the mother State, with the object of educating the people, so that effective voting might be applied for the first Federal elections. Mrs. Young and I left Adelaide on May 10 of that year to inaugurate the movement in New South Wales. During the few hours spent in Melbourne Professor Nanson, the Victorian leader of the reform, with another earnest worker (Mr. Bowditch), called on us, and we had a pleasant talk over the proposed campaign. The power of The Age had already been felt, when, at the convention election, the 10 successful candidates were nominees of that paper, and at that time it was a sturdy opponent of proportional representation. The Argus, on the other hand, had done yeoman service in the advocacy of the reform from the time that Tasmania had so successfully experimented with the system. As we were going straight through to Sydney, we were able only to suggest arrangements for a possible campaign on our return. Our Sydney visit lasted eight weeks, during which time we addressed between 20 and 30 public meetings. Our welcome to the harbour city was most enthusiastic, and our first meeting, held in the Protestant Hall, on the Wednesday after our arrival, with the Attorney-General in the chair, was packed. The greatest interest was shown in the counting of the 387 votes taken at the meeting. Miss Rose Scott, however, had paved the way for the successful public meeting by a reception at her house on the previous Monday, at which we met Mr. Wise, Sir William McMillan, Mr. (afterwards Sr. Walker), Mr. (now Sir A. J.) Gould, Mr. Bruce Smith, Mr. W. Holman, and several other prominent citizens. The reform was taken up earnestly by most of these gentlemen. Sir William McMillan was appointed the first President of the league, which was formed before we left Sydney. During the first week of our visit we dined with Dr. and Mrs. Garran, who, with their son (Mr. Robert Garran, C.M.G., afterwards the collaborateur of Sir John Quick in the compilation of the "Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth"), were keen supporters of effective voting. Among the host of well-known people who came after dinner to meet us was Mr. (now Sir) George Reid, with whom we had an interesting talk over the much-discussed "Yes-No" Policy. We had both opposed the Bill on its first appeal to the people, and seized the occasion to thank Mr. Reid for his share in delaying the measure. "You think the Bill as amended an improvement?" he asked. "Probably," replied Mrs. Young, "but as I didn't think the improvement great enough, I voted against it both times." But I had not done so, and my vote on the second occasion was in favour of the Bill.

But, as Mr. Reid admitted, the dislike of most reformers for federation was natural enough, for it was only to be expected that "reforms would be difficult to get with such a huge, unwieldy mass" to be moved before they could be won. And experience has proved the correctness of the view expressed. Anything in the nature of a real reform, judging from the experience of the past, will take a long time to bring about. I am convinced that had not South Australia already adopted the principle of the all-round land tax, the progressive form would have been the only one suggested or heard of from either party. Politicians are so apt to take the line of least resistance, and when thousands of votes of small landowners are to be won through the advocacy of an exemption, exemptions there will be. The whole system of taxation is wrong, it seems to me, and though, as a matter of expediency, sometimes from conviction, many people advocate the opposite course, I have long felt that taxation should not be imposed according to the ability to pay so much as according to benefits received from the State. We are frequently warned against expecting too much from Federation during its earlier stages, but experience teaches us that, as with human beings, so with nations, a wrong or a right beginning is responsible to a great extent for right or wrong development. I have the strongest hopes for the future of Australia, but the people must never be allowed to forget that eternal vigilance, as in the past, must still in the future be the price we must pay for our liberty. Later, Mr. Reid presided at our Parliament House meeting, and afterwards entertained us at afternoon tea. But one of our pleasantest memories was of a day spent with the great freetrader and Mrs. Reid at their Strathfield home. I was anxious to hear Mr. Reid speak, and was glad when the opportunity arose on the occasion of a no-confidence debate. But he was by no means at his best, and it was not until I heard him in his famous freetrade speech on his first visit to Adelaide that I realized how great an orator he was. At the close of the no-confidence debate the triumphant remark of an admirer that "Adelaide couldn't produce a speaker like that" showed me that a prophet sometimes hath honour, even in his own country.

Mr. Wise was a brilliant speaker, and a most cultured man, and a delightful talker. Of Mrs. Parkes, then President of the Women's Liberal League, I saw much. She was a fine speaker, and a very clear-headed thinker. Her organizing faculty was remarkable, and her death a year or two ago was a distinct loss to her party. Her home life was a standing example of the fallacy of the old idea that a woman who takes up public work must necessarily neglect her family. Mrs. Barbara Baynton was a woman of a quite different type, clever and emotional, as one would expect the author of the brilliant but tragic "Bush Studies" to be. She was strongly opposed to Federation, as, indeed were large numbers of clever people in New South Wales. Frank Fox (afterwards connected with The Lone Hand), Bertram Stevens (author of "An Anthology of Australian Verse"), Judge Backhouse (who was probably the only Socialist Judge on the Australian Bench), were frequent visitors at Miss Scott's, and were all interesting people. An afternoon meeting on effective voting was arranged at the Sydney University, I think, by Dr. Anderson Stuart. We were charmed with the university and its beautiful surroundings. Among the visitors that afternoon was Mrs. David, a charming and well-read woman, whose book describing an expedition to Funafuti, is delightful. We afterwards dined with her and Professor David, and spent a pleasant hour with them.

I was not neglectful of other reforms while on this campaign, and found time to interest myself in the State children's work with which my friend, Mrs. Garran, was so intimately connected. We went to Liverpool one day to visit the benevolent institution for men. There were some hundreds of men there housed in a huge building reminiscent of the early convict days. If not the whole, parts of it had been built by the convicts, and the massive stone staircase suggested to our minds the horrors of convict settlement. I have always resented the injury done to this new country by the foundation of penal settlements, through which Botany Bay lost its natural connotation as a habitat for wonderful flora, and became known only as a place where convicts were sent for three-quarters of a century. Barrington's couplet, written as a prologue at the opening of the Playhouse, Sydney, in 1796, to a play given by convicts—

True patriots we, for be it understood We left our country for our country's good—

was clever, but untrue. All experience proves that while it is a terrible injury to a new country to be settled by convicts, it is a real injury also to the people from whom they are sent, to shovel out of sight all their failures, and neither try to lessen their numbers nor to reclaim them to orderly civil life. It was not till Australia refused any longer to receive convicts, as Virginia had previously done, that serious efforts were made to amend the criminal code of England, or to use reformatory methods first with young and afterwards with older offenders. Another pleasant trip was one we took to Parramatta. The Government launch was courteously placed at our disposal to visit the Parramatta Home for Women, where also we found some comfortable homes for old couples. The separation of old people who would prefer to spend the last years of their life together is I consider, an outrage on society. One of my chief desires has been to establish such homes for destitute couples in South Australia, and to every woman who may be appointed as a member of the Destitute Board in future I appeal to do her utmost to change our methods of treatment with regard to old couples, so that to the curse of poverty may not be added the cruelty of enforced separation. Women in New South Wales were striving for the franchise at that time, and we had the pleasure of speaking at one of their big meetings. And what fine public meetings they had in Sydney! People there seemed to take a greater interest in politics than here, and crowded attendances were frequent at political meetings, even when there was no election to stir them up. It was a Sydney lady who produced this amusing Limerick in my honour:—

There was a Grand Dame of Australia Who proved the block system a failure. She taught creatures in coats What to do with their votes, This Effective Grand Dame of Australia!

The third line will perhaps preclude the necessity for pointing out that the author was an ardent suffragist! To an enlightened woman also was probably due the retort to a gentleman's statement that "Miss Spence was a good man lost," that, "On the contrary she thought she was a good woman saved." "In what way?" he asked. "Saved for the benefit of her country, instead of having her energies restricted to the advantages of one home," was the reply. And for this I have sometimes felt very thankful myself that I have been free to devote what gifts I possess to what I consider best for the advantage and the uplifting of humanity. Before leaving Sydney I tried once more to find a publisher for "Gathered In," but was assured that the only novels worth publishing in Australia were sporting or political novels.

I was in my seventy-fifth year at the time of this visit, but the joy of being enabled to extend the influence of our reform to other States was so great that the years rolled back and left me as full of life and vigour and zeal as I had ever been. Our work had by no means been confined to the city and suburbs, as we spoke at a few country towns as well. At Albury, where we stopped on our way back to Victoria, we were greeted by a crowded and enthusiastic audience in the fine hall of the Mechanics' Institute. We had passed through a snowstorm just before reaching Albury, and the country was very beautiful in the afternoon, when our friends drove us through the district. The Murray was in flood, and the "water, water everywhere" sparkling in the winter sunshine, with the snowcapped Australian Alps in the background, made an exquisite picture. Albury was the only town we visited in our travels which still retained the old custom of the town crier. Sitting in the room of the hotel after dinner, we were startled at hearing our names and our mission proclaimed to the world at large, to the accompaniment t of a clanging bell and introduced by the old-fashioned formula, "Oyez! oyez! oyez!" Our work in Victoria was limited, but included a delightful trip to Castlemaine. We were impressed with the fine Mechanics' Hall of that town, in which we spoke to a large audience. But a few years later the splendid building, with many others in the town, was razed to the ground by a disastrous cyclone. Returning from Castlemaine, we had an amusing experience in the train. I had laid aside my knitting, which is the usual companion of my travels, to teach Mrs. Young the game of "Patience," but at one of the stations a foreign gentleman entered the carriage, when we immediately put aside the cards. After chatting awhile, he expressed regret that he had been the cause of the banishment of our cards, and "Would the ladies not kindly tell him his fortune also?" He was as much amused as we were when we explained that we were reformers and not fortune tellers. I have been a great lover of card games all my life; patience in solitude, and cribbage, whist, and bridge have been the almost invariable accompaniments of my evenings spent at home or with my friends. Reading and knitting were often indulged in, but patience was a change and a rest and relief to the mind. I have always had the idea that card games are an excellent incentive to the memory. We had an afternoon meeting in the Melbourne Town Hall to inaugurate a league in Victoria, at which Dr. Barrett, the Rev. Dr. Bevan, Professor Nanson, and I were the principal speakers. Just recently I wrote to the Victorian Minister who had charge of the Preferential Voting Bill in the Victorian Parliament to ask him to consider the merits of effective voting; but, like most other politicians, the Minister did not find the time opportune for considering the question of electoral justice for all parties. I remained in Victoria to spend a month with my family and friends after Mrs. Young returned to Adelaide. The death of my dear brother John, whose sympathy and help had always meant so much to me, shortly after my return, followed by that of my brother William in New Zealand, left me the sole survivor of the generation which had sailed from Scotland in 1839.



CHAPTER XXIII.

MORE PUBLIC WORK.

For the co-operative movement I had always felt the keenest sympathy. I saw in it the liberation of the small wage-earner from the toils of the middlemen. I thought moreover that the incentive to thrift so strongly encouraged by co-operative societies would be a tremendous gain to the community as well as to the individual. How many people owe a comfortable old age to the delight of seeing their first small profits in a co-operative concern, or their savings in a building society accumulating steadily and surely, if but slowly? And I have always had a disposition to encourage anything that would tend to lighten the burden of the worker. So that when in 1901 Mrs. Agnes Milne placed before me a suggestion for the formation of a women's co-operative clothing factory, I was glad to do what I could to further an extension in South Australia of the movement, which, from its inception in older countries, had made so strong an appeal to my reason. A band of women workers were prepared to associate for the mutual benefit of the operatives in the shirtmaking and clothing trades. Under the title of the South Australian Co-operative Clothing Company, Limited, they proposed to take over and carry on a small private factory, owned by one of themselves, which had found it difficult to compete against large firms working with the latest machinery. I was sure of finding many sympathizers among my friends, and was successful in disposing of a fair number of shares. The movement had already gained support from thinking working women, and by the time we were ready to form ourselves into a company we were hopeful of success. I was appointed, and have since remained the first President of the board of directors; and, unless prevented by illness or absence from the State, I have never failed to be present at all meetings. The introduction of Wages Boards added to the keen competition between merchants, had made the task of carrying on successfully most difficult, but we hoped that as the idea gained publicity we should benefit proportionately. It was a great blow to us, when at the close of the first year we were able to declare a dividend of 1/ a share, the merchants closed down upon us and reduced their payments by 6d. or 9d. per dozen. But in spite of drawbacks we have maintained the struggle successfully, though sometimes at disheartening cost to the workers and officials of the society. I feel, however, that the reward of success due to this plucky band of women workers will come in the near future, for at no other time probably has the position looked more hopeful than during the present year.

During this same year the Effective Voting League made a new departure in its propaganda work by inviting Sir Edward Braddon to address a meeting in the Adelaide Town Hall. As Premier of Tasmania, Sir Edward had inaugurated the reform in the gallant little island State, and he was able to speak with authority on the practicability and the justice of effective voting. His visit was followed a year later by one from Sr. Keating, another enthusiastic Tasmanian supporter, whose lecture inspired South Australian workers to even greater efforts, and carried conviction to the minds of many waverers. At that meeting we first introduced the successful method of explanation by means of limelight slides. The idea of explaining the whole system by pictures had seemed impossible, but every step of the counting can be shown so simply and clearly by this means as to make an understanding of the system a certainty. To the majority of people an appeal to reason and understanding is made much more easily through the eye than through the ear. The year 1902 saw an advance in the Parliamentary agitation of the reform, when the Hon. Joseph (now Senator) Vardon introduced a Bill for the first time into the Legislative Council. The measure had been excellently prepared by Mr. J. H. Vaughan, LL.B., with the assistance of the members of the executive of the Effective Voting League, among whom were Messrs. Crawford Vaughan and E. A. Anstey. The Bill sought to apply effective voting to existing electoral districts, which, though not nearly so satisfactory as larger districts, nevertheless made the application of effective voting possible. With the enlargement of the district on the alteration of the Constitution subsequent to federation becoming an accomplished fact, the league was unanimous in its desire to seek the line of least resistance by avoiding a change in the Constitution that an alteration in electoral boundaries would have necessitated.

To Mr. Vardon, when he was a candidate for Legislative honours in 1900 the usual questions were sent from the league; but, as he had not studied the question he declined to pledge himself to support the reform. Realizing, however, the necessity of enquiring into all public matters, he decided to study the Hare system, but the league declined to support him without a written pledge. Still he was elected, and immediately afterwards studied effective voting, became convinced of its justice, and has remained a devoted advocate. Our experience with legislators had usually been of the opposite nature. Pledged adherents to effective voting during an election campaign, as members they no longer saw the necessity for a change in a method of voting which had placed them safely in Parliament; but in Mr. Vardon we found a man whose conversion to effective voting was a matter of principle, and not a question of gathering votes. That was why the league selected him as its Parliamentary advocate when effective voting first took definite shape in the form of a Bill. When, later, Mr. E. H. Coombe, M.P., took charge of the Bill in the Assembly although the growth in public opinion in favour of effective voting had been surprising, the coalition between the Liberal and Labour parties strengthened their combined position and weakened the allegiance of their elected members to a reform which would probably affect their vested interests in the Legislature. Mr. Coombe had not been an easy convert to proportional representation. He had attended my first lecture at Gawler, but saw difficulties in the way of accepting the Hare system as propounded by me. His experiments were interesting. Assuming a constituency of 100 electors with 10 members, he filled in 60 Conservative and 40 Liberal voting papers. The proportion of members to each party should be six Conservatives and four Liberals, and when he found that by no amount of manipulation could this result be altered he became a convert to effective voting. His able advocacy of the reform is too well known to need further reference; but I should like now to thank those members, including Mr. K. W. Duncan, who have in turn led the crusade for righteous representation in both Houses of Parliament, for of them may it truly be said that the interests of the people as a whole were their first consideration. Before I left for America I saw the growing power and strength of the Labour Party. I rejoiced that a new star had arisen in the political firmament. I looked to it as a party that would support every cause that tended towards righteousness. I expected it, as a reform party, to take up effective voting, because effective voting was a reform. I hoped that a party whose motto was "Trust the people" would have adopted a reform by means of which alone it would be possible for the people to gain control over its Legislature and its Government. Alas! for human hopes that depend on parties for their realization! As time after time I have seen defections from the ranks of proportionalists, and people have said to me:—"Give it up, Miss Spence. Why trouble longer? Human nature is too bad," I have answered, "No; these politicians are but the ephemeral creations of a day or a month, or a year; this reform is for all time, and must prevail, and I will never give it up."