"Here we have a problem in many respects similar to that which has distracted South Africa. In several particulars the resemblance is startlingly close. … Many of the elements of disorder in the two continents are the same. In Western Australia, as in the Transvaal, there is a large population of mining residents, who complain that they are treated like 'helots'—to use Sir Alfred Milner's term—by the privileged agricultural burghers. They urge that they are denied fair representation, so that the burghers monopolise political power; that the administration is in the hands of a knot of politicians and place-hunters at Perth—I had almost written Pretoria; that they have made the colony wealthy by their enterprise and capital, only to see a large part of the fruits of their industry drawn from them by excessive taxation, which is expended mainly outside their own district; that they are burdened by oppressive railway rates and denied access to the port which is the natural outlet to the Goldfields, and so on. The Kalgoorlie 'Uitlanders,' like the Johannesburgers, have sent a petition to the Queen, signed by a larger number of persons than those who forwarded the famous memorial which set the ball rolling in South Africa and led to the Bloemfontein Conference. The case is fully and temperately set forth in this petition, and in the Manifesto of the Eastern Goldfields Reform League of Western Australia, both of which documents are in the last Bluebook relating to Australian Federation. The same official compilation contains a statement to Mr. Chamberlain from Dr. Paget Thurston, in which the parallel between West Australia and the Transvaal is asserted with the most uncompromising directness. 'We have here,' says the writer, 'a Boer and Outlander question almost parallel to that in the Transvaal. As an Outlander I appeal to you.' Dr. Thurston adds: 'The old West Australians openly speak as if the colony was theirs, and we were interlopers who have no course open to us but to leave the colony if we are dissatisfied.' This has a very familiar sound, and so has the following: 'The great bulk of the taxation is levied through duties on food and drink. As the Boer party includes all the agricultural producers, and the Outlanders include the great bulk of the consumers, this acts injuriously on us in two ways. It puts a frightful load on the Outlander taxpayer, and enables the Boer producer to command a very high price for his food-stuffs. Owing to the limitation of the market by excessive protection, many articles of common use reach famine prices at times. In the three years I have been here, for instance, potatoes have been £22 10s. a ton; apples, 2s. 6d. a pound; oranges, 5s. a dozen; new-laid eggs, 4s. a dozen (at the time of writing, 3s. 6d.). Fresh butter is practically