As much as we may talk of democracy in Australia, we are far from realizing a truly democratic ideal.  A State in a pure democracy draws no nice and invidious distinctions between man and man.  She disclaims the right of favouring either property, education, talent, or virtue.  She conceives that all alike have an interest in good government, and that all who form the community, of full age and untainted by crime, should have a right to their share in the representation.  She allows education to exert its legitimate power through the press; talent in every department of business, property in its social and material advantages; virtue and religion to influence public opinion and the public conscience.  But she views all men as politically equal, and rightly so, if the equality is to be as real in operation as in theory.  If the equality is actual in the representation of the citizens—­truth and virtue, being stronger than error and vice, and wisdom being greater than folly, when a fair field is offered—­the higher qualities subdue the lower and make themselves felt in every department of the State.  But if the representation from defective machinery is not equal, the balance is overthrown, and neither education, talent, nor virtue can work through public opinion so as to have any beneficial influence on politics.  We know that in despotisms and oligarchies, where the majority are unrepresented and the few extinguish the many, independence of thought is crushed down, talent is bribed to do service to tyranny, education is confined to a privileged class and denied to the people, property is sometimes pillaged and sometimes flattered, and even virtue is degraded by lowering its field and making subservience appear to be patience and loyalty, and religion is not unfrequently made the handmaid of oppression.  Taxes fall heavily on the poor for the benefit of the rich, and the only check proceeds from the fear of rebellion.  When, on the other hand, the majority extinguishes the minority, the evil effects are not so apparent.  The body oppressed is smaller and generally wealthier, with many social advantages to draw off attention from the political injustice under which they suffer; but there is the same want of sympathy between class and class, moral courage is rare, talent is perverted, genius is overlooked, education is general, but superficial, and press and Pulpit often timid in exposing or denouncing popular errors.  An average standard of virtue is all that is aimed at, and when no higher mark is set up there is great fear of falling below the average.  Therefore it is incumbent on all States to look well to it that their representative systems really secure the political equality they all profess to give, for until that is done democracy has had no fair trial.