CHAPTER XII
AUSTRALIA IN THE THIRD EPOCH
In the third epoch the character of Australian history not The third only developed but changed; and new ideas and tendencies e ^f^ com " came into play. Sometimes the novelty was more apparent than real ; sometimes indeed the only novelty was a sense of novelty, and ghosts were hailed as new-born babes. The epoch was new and unconformable with the old, not only because new institutions were adopted but because old institutions were revived, and a new spirit was breathed into the bones of the dead past. The third epoch combined in it features of the first and second epoch in a manner peculiarly its own.
The first epoch illustrated the quintessence of Socialism, the socially), the beginning was the State, which fed, clothed and employed every man — which was universal provider, and besides State servants there were no free people. Then soldiers and people with a past took tentatively to private industry, they and their children settled down, a few capitalists arrived, bushcraft was invented, New South Wales swelled from forty to 140 miles wide, the wool trade struck root, prospects of future wealth dazzled men's eyes, and the thin-spun life of the colony and of the three or four frail sub-settlements which shared its precarious fate seemed safe.
In the second epoch safety and permanence were no with the longer in question ; wealth was no longer an empty vision ; ^7/^ commerce flourished and progressed. Children and State- second, aided immigrants gradually submerged convicts, soldiers, and
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