March 13th. I am aware that outside these walls, at any rate, there is a feeling that we ought to wait; that the time has not yet come.  I can only repeat what I have said in other places.  If we miss this particular opportunity, every year that rolls over us will make the difficulties greater; these difficulties which our separate existence have imposed will go on increasing.  They can only have one crop of fruit; they can only produce antipathy, disunion, aggression, reprisal, wide-spread discontent, and, if they are suffered to go on, civil war.  That is a prospect which no man of just mind can contemplate—­that these colonies, sprung from the same stock, possessing the same great inheritance of equal laws and all the riches of science which have been achieved and stored up for us in the mother country—­that we, side by side, instead of living in brotherhood and amity, should live in constant irritation and hostility.  Either we must join hands, or we must hold out our hands in defiance of each other.  In the very nature of things we cannot be divided and be one.  In the very nature of things we cannot submit to causes of irritation, causes of infliction, causes of dissatisfaction, causes of exasperation, and still live in brotherhood.  It is only by joining hands in good faith as the people of one kindred; it is only by giving and taking—­by entertaining compromise as far as compromise can be entertained without deadly injury to principle—­it is only by doing that, we can hope to found this union.  If we unfortunately miss this great occasion, and leave the work undone, it will be done in a few years hence, and it will be done by younger hands, who will gain the credit of having effected this bond of union, which will be in itself, if rightly effected, of more value than any other achievement in the history of this continent.

This is no time for glowing periods; it is no time for rhetorical flights; but it is a time for hard and steady work in trying to do what we are called here to do, and I would ask the honourable members to do their utmost by a calm self-suppression, by a close attention to the object which has brought us here, by mutual respect, mutual forbearance, and disposition to compromise where compromise is possible, to assist each other in bringing about this great work; and I would say that if we do seize the occasion and succeed in doing the work, we shall have, not now so vividly as hereafter, the blessing of this and succeeding generations in what we have accomplished.

THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA

+Source.+—­The Melbourne Argus, 10 May 1901

     OPENING OF THE FIRST PARLIAMENT