unobtainable for ten months in the year, and common country wine (such as I used to buy for 3d. and 4d. a bottle in the Canary Islands) is here 2s. a bottle. I ask you, Sir, whether any other place in Her Majesty's Empire (not physically inaccessible) can show prices one half as high during the past three years?' "Nor does the ominous kind of hint that preceded the Jameson Raid fail to be uttered. Only three terminations, according to Dr. Thurston, are possible if Sir John Forrest does not modify his Krugerite policy towards the mining settlers: '(1) Separation of the goldfields.—This would be only fair to the goldfields; but thousands of Outlanders have settled in the other parts of the colony, and this step would not redress their wrongs. The practical result of this step would be prosperity for the goldfields, but almost ruin for the rest of the colony. (2) Revolution.—I fear this is much more probable than is generally thought. Unless a material change takes place quickly there will be bloodshed in this colony. (3) General depression, practically equivalent to bankruptcy.' Separation, however, and the creation of a new colony, which would include the Goldfields district and come down to the sea, and would immediately join the Australian Federation, is the remedy officially proposed by the representatives of the Outlanders. … {30} "The Colonial Secretary has deferred his final answer to the Goldfields Petition until the comments of the Perth Ministry upon that document have been received and considered. But he has sent a provisional reply to the representatives of the petitioners in London. He sees the solution of the matter in getting Western Australia somehow into the new Commonwealth. In a communication to Mr. Walter Griffiths, one of the Goldfields delegates, the Colonial Secretary says: 'The decision of the Government of Western Australia to summon Parliament immediately with the view to the passing of a measure for the submission of the Commonwealth Bill to the electors of the colony has removed the chief of the grievances put forward in the petition and has opened up an early prospect of obtaining the object which the petitioners had in view. An answer will be returned to the petition after a careful consideration of its terms and of the comments of the Government of the colony thereon, but Mr. Chamberlain trusts that before an answer can be returned the people of the colony will have decided to join the Commonwealth, for the government of which, in that event, it will be to deal with the grievances alleged in the petition in so far as they are not exclusively within the province of the Parliament and Government of Western Australia.' In other words, let the Federation dispose of the matter. But the delegates point out that this might not remove their grievances.