FOR AND AGAINST: Different Views
Document 3

Focus questions
FeQ5 In this letter, Edmund Barton writes to his fellow electors to convince them to vote for Federation. What are the good points of the Draft Bill?
FeQ6 How and when does he suggest the imperfections of the Draft Bill will be solved?

VOTE FOR THE BILL

TO THE ELECTORS OF NEW SOUTH WALES
GENTLEMEN,-In addressing you on the eve of the most momentous day that has yet dawned on Australia since its first settlement, I do not presume to speak to you simply as a private citizen … but as one who has been honoured by yourselves with a trust at once distinguished and onerous. I speak to you now as the man whom you placed first among your chosen delegates to the Federal Convention … and appeal to you with all the sincerity and all the earnestness of my nature, to vote for the acceptance of the Draft Bill to constitute the Commonwealth of Australia, as adopted and promulgated by the Federal Convention.

I do so, because that Bill represents the result, not merely of 12 months' debate in Convention, but of the debate and the keenest critical discussion in Press, Parliament and Convention, and in private life, of the past seven years. I do so, because it represents the most conscientious work of the representative public men of the colonies proposing to federate-men chosen in all colonies but one by the purely Democratic method of the massed popular vote. I do so, because it embodies that spirit of compromise between the conflicting interests of State and State, and between opposite types of individual opinion, which, as to the one, is demanded by the genius of true Federalism, and, as to the other, by the genius of British political institutions. I do so, because I think that it is a Bill which, once passed into law, will afford the freest play to individual and national energy in the field of commercial, industrial, and intellectual expansion, and because I cannot conceive that under it any irreparable injustice can be inflicted on any State, or citizen of a State. I do so, because I believe, from the bottom of my heart, that it is a measure demanded by the political necessities of Australia, and that it may be accepted by every citizen of the Federating colonies, and particularly by every citizen of the Mother Colony, as an instrument by which the now severed provinces may be shaped into a nation, great in material wealth, splendid in intelligence, and noble in humanity.

Measuring my words, weighing every syllable, and strongly sensible of the tremendous responsibility resting on me as your Delegate to the Convention, as the Leader of the Convention, and as the man who now addresses you, I yet ask you to strike the word "No!" from your voting papers on the day of the Federal Vote. I could not ask this of you did the Bill contain any clause that could injure you, or your children, or your children's children. Perfect the Bill is not; but you will gain no better Bill by delay; and the Bill contains within itself the means of its own amendment when the Federal Parliament, representing the whole Commonwealth, demands its amendment in the interests of the Commonwealth. The security and honour of the Australian colonies require that they shall Federate. Here is a Draft Constitution under which they may safely Federate. To reject the Draft Constitution will be to postpone Federation indefinitely, therefore I ask you to "VOTE FOR THE BILL."

I have addressed you as your Delegate to the Convention, and as Leader of the Convention. One word, I may, however, add as your fellow elector. New South Wales is my native colony – it is my home. Such success as I have had in private and in public life has been won within its bounds, or been conferred by its people. It is the birth-place of my children. My life has been as an open book before you. In voting for the Bill, I am committing myself, and the happiness of my children, to the Australian future. You do no less, but you do no more. Need I say more?

Edmund Barton, letter to Maitland Daily Mercury, 1 June 1898, cited in Scott Bennett (ed.), Federation, Cassell Australia, North Melbourne, 1975, pp. 167-8.