ABSTRACT
By the turn of the century it was most common among continental writers to refer to the Antipodes as Australasia, and to New Zealand as one of its States. As Alfred Manes and other writers correctly suggested, New Zealand was the real pacesetter in social legislation, and a lot of the credit Australia received for its advanced social state should really have gone to New Zealand. The communal organisation of the Anglo-Saxon communities has held a great attraction for the progressive bourgeois politicians of Europe over the last seventy years. They fled from dungeons and police reprisals, chiefly to the United States, then to England and finally to New Zealand to be edified by the free constitution and socio-political legislation. Alexis de Tocqueville’s dissertation on democracy in America, which for decades was considered a classic, still holds some interest for literary historians and psychologists.
