FOR AND AGAINST: Different Views
Document 1

Alfred Deakin was perhaps the person who did most to achieve Federation in Australia. Here he describes the impact of political dealings on the Federation movement.

Focus questions
FeQ1 In this document Deakin tells us that many of the people working towards Federation were motivated by more than the ideal of creating a united nation. What is the main reason of the electors to support Federation?
FeQ2 What is an additional reason for the political representatives (i.e. 'the chief actors') to support Federation?
FeQ3 'The enthusiasm for union' in part, at least, influenced everyone working for Federation. Who are the people influenced more by patriotism than money or personal gain?

'SECURED BY A SERIES OF MIRACLES'

DELAYS AND DIFFICULTIES IN THE FEDERATION PROCESS
The fortunes of Federalism have visibly trembled in the balance twenty times during the past ten years and have from the first moment to the last been subject to endless unforeseen and unpreventable interruptions, every one of which might have indefinitely postponed its triumph. Again and again it was made the sport of ministeries and Parliaments and local agitations and just as often, indeed at every step, it benefited by their necessities and purely selfish actions. It is scarcely too much to say that with very few exceptions the decisive steps which have led to success were taken with other or ulterior motives by the public men responsible for them. Few were those in each colony who made genuine sacrifices to the cause without thought or hope of gain. The stimulus to the electors as to their representatives was chiefly the prospect of financial gain, though the desire for fame and for association with so great a work counted for a great deal among the chief actors. The enthusiasm for union without which the merely selfish energy would have died down and disappeared many times, swayed all to some extent but was the dominating factor only among the young, the imaginative, and those whose patriotism was Australian or Imperial. This feeling of loyalty was the mainspring of the whole movement and its constant motive power ... To those who watched its inner workings, followed its fortunes as if their own, and lived the life of devotion to it day by day, its actual accomplishment must always appear to have been secured by a series of miracles.

Alfred Deakin writing on 14 September 1900 in The Federal Story (1900) p. 9, republished as Alfred Deakin, The Federal Story: the inner history of the federal cause, Forward by Rt. Hon. W.A. Watt, P.C., edited by Herbert Brookes, Melbourne: Robertson & Mullens, 1944. In 1963 J.A. La Nauze produced another edition, published by Melbourne University Press. Cited in Raymond Evans et al., 1901 Our Future's Past, Macmillan, Sydney, 1997, pp. 108-9.

ANOTHER ROW IMPENDING AMONG THE FIRE-FIGHTERS.
New South Wales: THAT'S my WATER!
Victoria: TAIN'T!
New South Wales: TIS!
Victoria: TAIN'T!
New South Wales: TIS!
Melbourne Punch, 7 March 1889.