CHAPTER VI.
THE GREAT BATTLE.
After the collapse of the British Empire, which, as all students of history are aware, was chiefly occasioned by the Anglo-Russian war, in which the "Tsar of all the Russias" was completely victorious, and by the annexation of India extended his territory to the Indian Ocean, the Australian Colonies were formed into an independent Federal Republic. The method of government was still in theory democratic, although in practice plutocratic. There was a Federal Parliament, consisting of a House of Representatives and a Senate. Each Representative had a constituency of not less than thirty thousand electors, which no one but a rich man or a tool of the financial rings ever attempted to "represent," for not only did it require considerable money to contest such a large electorate, but it was generally believed that the ballot had ceased to be secret and there was so much fraud exercised at elections by the agents of the financial rings that it was regarded as quite impossible to return pure democrats to power. Of the two branches of the legislature, however, the more oligarchic was the Senate, which consisted of eight men from each of the State Parliaments. These men were, of course, actually appointed by the rings, and in the Senate were, after the rings, the most powerful in Australia. They retired from office by rotation, so that there was never a general election, nor had the President of the so-called Republic, power to dissolve the Senate. It had a veto over all bills passed by the "Representatives," was secure by the nature of its constitution from any possibility of its being influenced by the masses (termed by the Senators "the swinish multitude"), and was defended by a powerful army and well-equipped navy. The army and navy had been originally formed for the ostensible purpose of protecting life and property from a possible Russian or Chinese invasion, but it was soon evident that the greatest danger to the Australian plutocracy was "from within, not from without," and consequently for the purpose of stamping out anything like incipient revolt, the army and navy became very useful to their employers.
The seat of the Federal Government was at first Hobart, which had become but a trifling distance from the continent, owing to the great ease and speed of the newly-invented boats, driven by compressed air; but when it became manifest that even in conservative Tasmania the Government was not quite secure from "popular clamour," it was decided that Albury, once celebrated as a border town, but which, after the enlargement of Victoria and the consequent shifting of the border, had degenerated into a mere Sleepy Hollow, should be the new Federal city. The change answered admirably and the Government, now enormously powerful, ruled Australia, in the interest of the rings, with a rod of iron.
