Focus questions
RaQ11 The English 'race' is praised as being tolerant. To what other 'races' does this tolerance extend?
RaQ12 Which races are excluded? (Base your answer on all the 'Racism' documents.)
RaQ13 What condition must 'foreigners' fulfil for them to 'earn' equal rights?

A TOLERANT RACE?

The English are a tolerant race. Wherever the Union jack flutters in the breeze the men of all civilised nationalities are equally welcome and enjoy equal rights. All that we ask of the "foreigner" is that he become nationalised and throw off allegiance to his mother country. In ... all British colonies we find Germans, Frenchman, Dutchmen, Italians, Greeks, and Americans living in happy concord; and seldom does one hear a whisper of complaint or dissatisfaction with the "powers that be". As a dominant race, the British are unquestionably the finest and most tolerant in the world; as a subject race they are an unspeakable and woeful failure. Place a country in the hands of the English people and you will at once see the administration of justice placed beyond reproach, and you will see reasonably fair political conditions established. One feature of colonial policy is the enforcement of absolute equality among civilised colonists, regardless of their nationality. We have not two sets of laws – one for the Britisher and one for the foreigner.

Nothing could more forcibly demonstrate the Englishman's virtues as a ruler and his vices as a subject than the happy condition prevailing in the Australian colonies ... In these colonies we open every road to distinction and wealth to the people of every civilised race – there is no position which a born Britisher may aspire to which is not within the reach of the naturalised subject from France, or Germany, or Holland. But we insist, and rightly insist, upon naturalisation.

Progress: A Journal devoted to the Advancement and Prosperity of Queensland as a Colony and as a State of the Australian Commonwealth, Brisbane, 4 November 1899, cited in Raymond Evans et al., 1901 Our Future's Past, Macmillan, Sydney, 1997, pp. 50-1.