As a matter of fact, a referendum has been put in practice in South Australia, in New Zealand, in New South Wales, and was used more recently to decide upon the important question of the Australian Commonwealth. That it would have occupied six months to take such a referendum, during which period the gold of the Transvaal would have vanished, everybody would have refused to work, and the Kaffir market would have been blotted out, was preposterous. Yet, at the moment when Lord Milner made this statement, a census of the colony was taken, which only occupied seven weeks. It is not unreasonable to assume that such a referendum would have occupied more than a month. All the arguments of the Opposition were in vain against such plausibility. It was useless to point out that while the educated Chinese were good citizens, the bitter experience of Australia, Canada, the United States and New Zealand proved conclusively that the uneducated Chinamen, wherever they went, were vicious, immoral and unclean, hated by the white man, loathed and feared by every decent white woman. The Government admitted the danger of allowing 50,000 Chinamen to be planted down in a colony without any restrictions. Their introduction was a regrettable necessity; and so it was proposed to keep them in compounds, to round them up every night like sheep, to make them liable to heavy penalties if they wandered abroad without a permit. This was the only way, they declared, in which these necessary evils could be used. Of the necessity of utilizing the evil at all they were convinced, and no argument succeeded in shaking their faith. It was pointed out to them that this would be semi-slavery, if not indeed actual slavery. The Chinaman was not to be employed in any position but that of a miner; he could not improve his position; he could not give notice to one employer and go to another. He could never leave the compound without permission. If he struck work he could be imprisoned. He was bound to reside on the premises of his employer, in charge of a manager appointed for the purpose. Permission to leave these premises might or might not be granted; but in any case he could never be absent for more than forty-eight hours at a time. If he escaped, he could be tracked down, arrested without a warrant and imprisoned by a magistrate, while anybody who harboured or concealed him was fined £50, or imprisoned in default of payment. The Ordinance was without parallel in the Empire. Because the Chinese were competitors, because they were a moral and social danger, the supporters of the Ordinance were compelled to devise some system under which it could become law in the Transvaal, and by which they could yet prevent any one of the Chinamen brought in being able at any time to leave his employment and turn to other and more profitable undertakings.