Indoors the Australian boy is more objectionable than the English one, because he is under less restraint, and knows no precincts forbidden to him.  Generally intelligent and observant, he is here, there, and everywhere; nothing escapes him, nothing is sacred to him.  Of course his further development draws its form and shape from his previous caterpillar condition, and when he comes to take his place in mercantile or professional life, he is equally disagreeable and irrepressible.

But such a young ‘gum-sucker’ must not be confounded with the ordinary middle-class Englishmen who form the majority of the professional and business men one comes in contact with in the present day.  The native Australian element is still altogether in the minority in everyday life, and the majority of adults are English-born colonists.  What modification then, you will ask, does the middle-class Englishman undergo in Australia?  In some ways, a deterioration; in others, an amelioration.  The deteriorating tendency shows itself in an increased love of dram—­and especially spirit—­drinking; in apparel and general carelessness; in a roughening of manner and an increase of selfishness.  The improvement lies chiefly in greater independence of manner and thought, in a greater amount of thought, in enlarged and more tolerant views, in less reserve and morgue, in additional kindness of heart, and in a more complete realization of the great fact of human brotherhood.

In Australia a man feels himself an unit in the community, a somebody; in England he is one amongst twenty-seven millions, a nobody.  This feeling brings with it a greater sense of self-respect and responsibility.  Altogether, then, it may be said that the balance of the modification is generally on the side of improvement rather than of deterioration.  The Englishman in Australia improves more than he deteriorates.  And this is the more true the lower you descend in the social scale.  It may be doubted whether the really well-educated man—­the ‘gentleman’ in short, to use the word in its technical sense of a man well born, well bred, and well educated—­generally improves in the colonies.  As a rule, I should say he deteriorates.  He cannot often find a sufficiently large number of his equals within a sufficiently small area, nor keep sufficiently amongst them not to lose somewhat in manner and culture.  He develops the breadth, as distinct from the depth, of his intellect.  He learns a great deal which he did not know before from the life around him, but he also forgets a great deal which he has learnt.

The great tendency of Australian life is democratic, i.e. levelling.  The lower middle-class and the upper middle-class are much less distinct than at home, and come more freely and frequently, indeed continually, into contact with each other.  This is excellent for the former, but not so good for the latter.  In the generation that is growing up, the levelling process is going much further.  The small tradesmen’s sons are going into professions, and the professional men’s sons into trades.  You have the same tendency in England, but not nearly to the same extent.