Federation Editorial
The following editorial appeared in the "Morwell Advertiser" on Friday 4th. January 1901
| REFERRING to the accomplishment of Federation, over which we
all rejoice, the "Argus" says: - " Australia’s most eventful day has passed into
history, and the Commonwealth, once a dream, then a purpose, is at last a
reality. All Australians and Tasmanians are now, and ever more will be,
fellow-citizens. With the opening of the century we enter upon national unity.
We shall always retain our local independence in local matters, but we have now
established a common participation and responsibility in national affairs. The
word Australian has become the expression of a political fact. We cannot hope to
make the transition to the new citizenship with miraculous swiftness. The
feeling of the new citizenship is a thing of growth, and all growth requires
time. But the precedents of the United States and Canada assure us that if the
federal movement has been based upon a federal disposition time is all that is
required, and that soon the national citizenship will, by general consent, or
rather by a general and irresistible impulse, be exalted far above the
citizenship of the state. We shall delight in rendering it a loyal service. All
that belongs to the peace and prosperity and progress of the Commonwealth will
be a part of our daily lives. We shall broaden with our broader duty. The
transition will not be a hard discipline. The indissoluble union is our own
desire and choice, and the constitution has been drafted by our own leaders, and
bears the impress of our own approval. Our political ideas and principles and
hopes are embodied in it, and the power of amendment rests on our own hands.
Much of our best thought and sentiment has already been given to the
Commonwealth. It wears no foreign aspect to our eyes. It is not a yoke that has
come to us from across seas. It has the homely attractiveness pertaining to a
spontaneous product of our own democracy. |
