Historical Introduction to the Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth

Historical Introduction to The Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth Quick, John (1852-1932) University of Sydney Library Sydney 2000 http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit © University of Sydney Library. The texts and images are not to be used for commercial purposes without permission Source Text: Prepared from the print edition The Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth, published by Angus and Robertson; Melville and Mullen; The Australian Book Company , Sydney; Melbourne; London 1901 All quotation marks retained as data All unambiguous end-of-line hyphens have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line. Author First Published 1901 342.94 Australian Etexts 1890-1909 prose nonfiction federation 3rd May 2000 Final Checking and Parsing The ANNOTATED CONSTITUTION of the AUSTRALIAN COMMONWEALTH SYDNEY; MELBOURNE ANGUS and Robertson; Melville and Mullen; The Australian Book Company 1901 Part I. Ancient Colonies. (1) Hellenic City-States. COLONIES AND PLANTATIONS. — The terms "Colony" and "Plantation" were originally applied to English settlements abroad, or small communities of English subjects established in foreign parts, principally for the purpose of raising produce. They were never extended to English dominions in Europe, such as Dunkirk, Toulon, and Calais, whilst those places belonged to the kingdom, nor were they, nor are they at the present time used in reference to Jersey or Guernsey, or other islands in the English Channel. For some years the terms colony and plantation were used indiscriminately. In the reign of Charles II. "Colony" came into general use, to denote the relation of dependence in which American Plantations stood to the Crown. A colony then came to mean a plantation which had a Governor and civil establishment subordinate to the mother country. In the statute 7 and 8 William III. c. 22, declaring void Colonial Laws repugnant to English Law applicable to the colonies, and in the Navigation Acts afterwards passed, the two names are used without distinction. — Petersdorff's Abridgment, vol. V., p. 540. In connection with a new instrument of Government which marks the transition from the colonial system planted in Australia over one hundred years ago to a new order of things, a higher and more complex political organization, a larger measure of self-government, and a more matured social development, it will be fitting to draw attention to the origin and growth of British colonies, and to some of their leading characteristics and achievements, and to compare them with the colonies of antiquity with which they in some respects agree, but from which they in more respects differ. They agree in having, like the older types, sprung from a parent stock, but they differ materially in the circumstances and motives which led to their establishment, in their primary structure, and in their relations with the mother country, as well as in their career and progress. GREEK COLONIES. — Various tribes and divisions, of which the ancient Hellenic race was composed, participated in the settlements known as Greek colonies. The causes which led to these migrations were the pressure of population on the means of subsistence within the narrow limits of crowded cities; internal dissensions consequent on class domination and party faction; and a love for maritime exploration and discovery. Among the first recorded of these settlements were the Ionian colonies. After the death of Codrus (B.C., 1100, according to the early legends of Greek history), Ionian adventurers sailing eastward and northward from Attica, established themselves in that part of Asia Minor along the shores of the Aegean sea from Phocaea to Miletus. Twelve cities were built, the principal of which were Ephesus and Miletus. They were severally independent of the States from which their founders had emigrated, but they formed a mutual association for common purposes known as the Ionic Confederacy. From this new centre expeditions went forth and planted commercial emporiums on the shores of the Black Sea, including one from Miletus which established Sinope, the greatest and most important of the colonial stations fronting the Euxine. Trebezus (Trebizond) was afterwards settled from Sinope. Whilst the Ionians were thus engaged, another body of Greeks, Aeolians, proceeding from Thessaly and Boeotia, founded Aeolian colonies on the northern islands of the Aegean sea, and on the northern part of the western coast of Asia Minor. They also were united in a confederacy of twelve cities, called the Aeolian Confederacy, the chief of which were Lesbos and Tenedos. In like manner the Dorians, another Hellenic tribe, settled in the southern islands and in the southern part of the western coast of Asia Minor. Six of these cities formed themselves into the Dorian Confederacy. In 658 B.C., Greek emigrants from Megara established a colony at Byzantium, commanding an entrance to the Euxine, which grew into an important centre, and in after ages became Constantinople. The Dorians and other Greeks sailing along the Mediterranean westward and southward from their central home reached Sicily, Italy, Gaul (South France), and even Africa; planting in Sicily, Syracuse and Agrigentum, two of the most splendid cities of the ancient world; in the forked peninsula of Italy, cities such as Tarentum, Sybaris, Croton, Metapontum, Rhegium, Cumae, and Neapolis (Naples), in which Greek civilization became so advanced and the colonists so numerous that Lower Italy was known as Graecia Magna or Great Greece; in the south of Gall, Massilia (Marseilles), which for centuries was one of the most important commercial centres of the Mediterranean; and on the northern shore of Africa, between the Nile and Carthage, Cyrene, occupying a fine maritime situation which developed into a city rivalling the Phoenician capital in wealth and splendour. The very name "Apoikia," by which these primitive communities were known, indicated their true character and origin. A Greek colony was not a mere plantation retaining its connection with the parent state from which its pioneers had emigrated; it was literally a going-away-from-home, a parting, a complete separation. These colonial groups went away from their old city-states, like swarms from old hives, to cluster in new hives, to cultivate new lands, to found new cities, to establish new centres of trade and commerce. Following, in their tiny ships, the ebbs and flows of the great tidal sea, they, for the most part, clung to its coastal regions. They explored what was to them a new world of strange waters, and here and there on the narrow fringes of the seaboard they made camps which grew into towns and bustling cities, pulsating with new life and new energy. The situations selected afforded convenient sites within communication, by sea, with their ancient seats, and at the same time they were accessible to an avenue of retreat from the invasions of barbarous hordes, should they emerge from the interior. Greek colonization was not promoted by state-aid or state-patronage. It was in some instances prosecuted in spite of the opposition of Greek cities, from which the migrating swarms went forth. From small beginnings these insignificant groups, whilst preserving the laws, customs, and institutions of their mother-cities, which they regarded with respect and reverence, grew in power, influence, and importance, and became autonomous political communities. With one or two exceptions each of them enjoyed the unfettered right of self-government. Until they became subject to local despots, or were crushed by foreign conquest, the people of each colony exercised perfect freedom in the management of their own affairs; they appointed their own leaders and magistrates, and, even in their foreign relations, they were independent of their mother-city; they could declare war and make peace with her public enemies. In every respect, therefore, these small Greek societies were free and sovereign commonwealths, having the obligation to maintain that freedom and sovereignty against external attacks, by their own prowess and with their own resources. They owed no allegiance to any distant hereditary king, nor were they under subjection to any political state except their own. The mother-cities from which they had migrated regarded them as emancipated children over whom they exercised no direct authority or jurisdiction; guaranteed them favours and assistance in times of difficulty and danger, and expected nothing in return except filial respect and gratitude. In the course of time some of these Greek colonies equalled if they did not surpass the mother-cities in wealth, population, art, philosophy and poetry, and in all the achievements of culture and civilized life. The only ties tending to draw them together in sympathy were those of common language, common religion and common blood; vital forces which seldom fail to yield tremendous results in the history of mankind. This community of sentiment led in some instances to something like a federal union between the original states and their colonial offshoots; such as the defensive league between Imperial Athens and the powerful Ionian cities of the Aegean sea and Asian shore, known as the Confederation of Delos. — Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, pp. 249, 252, 454. Conversations Lexicon, vol. VI., p. 768. "The Greek colonist, citizen of a city, planted a city. Severed from his native city, severed perhaps by such a world of waters as that which parts Euboia from Sicily or by such a wider world of waters as parts Phokaia from Gaul, he could no longer remain a citizen of his own city; he could no longer discharge the duties of citizenship on a distant spot; he could no longer join in the debates of the old agoré; he could no longer join in the worship of the old temple; but he must still have some agoré and some temple; he must still have a city to dwell in, a city in which still to dwell the life of a free Greek, when he could no longer live that life in the city of his birth.

Load more