The observant wanderer picks up proofs of this all the time that he is travelling, and the most significant of these is found in the very thinly veiled hostility of the various colonies towards each other. If you are in Sydney you must not say too much in praise of Melbourne; just as, when you are in New York it isn’t wise to say too much about Chicago; or, if you happen to be the guest of a club in San Francisco, you had better not descant too eloquently on the culture of Boston. Still, in the United States there is a healthy and unrestrained rivalry between these and many other cities. There is free trade from Maine to Mexico, and from New Orleans to Talama. In fact, as an American Senator once said in defence of the first tariff, America within its own borders is the biggest free-trading country in the world. For instance, throughout the length and breadth of the United States you can communicate with other people by letter or telegram on the same rate. Now, when I got to Albany, Western Australia, I found that I owed a small account of one and sixpence to a firm in Sydney. The money order cost me two and ninepence. Again, all over the civilised world, saving Australia, a Bank of England note is worth either its face value or little more. It happened that when I landed in Sydney I had £80 in £10 Bank of England notes. I went to two or three banks to get them changed, and I found that I could only get gold for them at a discount of two and sixpence on the £5, or £2 in all. I then went to the Comptoire d’Escompt, in Pitt Street, and got my £80 changed into English gold for five shillings. When I came to inquire into the matter further I found that the Australian banks had entered into a sort of conspiracy to defraud the unsuspecting traveller who ventures to bring the best paper currency in the world into the Australian colonies. For instance, you pay a deposit into the Sydney branch of an Australian bank, you take its notes for the amount that you may need in travelling, say, from Sydney to Melbourne, and when you present those notes at a branch _of the same bank_ you are charged two and a half per cent. for cashing them. In other words, the bank goes back on its own paper to the extent of five shillings on the £10-note. This seems bad enough, but my friend the Accidental American told me of something even worse. He was representing one of the biggest manufacturing firms in the United States. Their credit was as good as gold anywhere. He paid a deposit in Auckland into the Bank of New Zealand, believing that his cheque would be good for its face value throughout the colonies, but when he tried to draw cheques on the branches of the Bank of New Zealand in Australia he was charged two and a half per cent. discount!