It is characteristic of the Liberal party that even when it has dropped accidentally across a right conclusion it invariably seizes with great eagerness upon the wrong reasons for supporting it. The most striking example of this is to be found in the case of Chinese Labour. For myself, I detest Chinese Labour, and am prepared to go, I fancy, a good deal further than the Liberal front bench in fighting it. But then I am a Protectionist; and I believe that a plentiful supply of cheap labour is the worst curse with which a nation can be visited. The Liberals and their Labour henchmen, precluded by reason of their Free Trade orthodoxies from taking up this sane and tenable position, have to devote their energies to denouncing the “slavery” involved in the conditions of the Ordinance. Now no Socialist can be expected to get very excited on this point. He hates slavery, but he recognises that in one form or another it is an inherent part of the capitalist system, and the difference between telling a man that he must work for his master or be imprisoned and telling him that he must work for his master or be starved, can hardly seem to him important enough to make all this fuss about. Moreover “forced labour” is implicit in the Socialist ideal, though most of us would prefer to begin by applying it to the Rand shareholders. As a matter of fact the conditions of the Ordinance are a mitigation of the evils resulting from Chinese Labour, not an aggravation of them. They serve to circumscribe to some extent the limits of the damage which the imported Chinaman can do. My objection to them is that I do not for one moment believe that they can be made effective. But the danger of denouncing the conditions of importation instead of denouncing the importation itself, is that one of these days our Hebrew masters will say to us:--“Very well. You object to conditions; you shall have none. We will import Chinamen freely and without restriction, and they shall supplant white men, not in the mines only, but in every industry throughout South Africa. We shall reap still larger dividends, and the danger of a white proletariat will be still more remote. Now we hope you are satisfied.” What will our Free Trade Labourites say then?