"Every mine has its lock-up for malingerers, deserters, and others. At the Witwatersrand the coolies are handcuffed over a horizontal beam. "The floor is of concrete, and they may sit down, but the beam is so far from the floor that it is impossible for any but exceptionally tall men to sit while handcuffed. They must therefore squat, and for a change raise themselves in a semi-standing posture. [Illustration: INSTEAD OF FLOGGING.] "When released, these prisoners stagger about until they regain the use of their legs; then they take their skoff and go below to work. "With the abolition of flogging, compound managers are now inventing other forms of punishment. In future, also, there will be an extensive system of fines, and food will be withheld. "Meanwhile, with all these methods of punishment, the coolies are still turbulent. Last Monday practically every boy on the Nourse Deep--seventy-five in all--was sent to gaol for seven days. This step is certain to foment trouble in the near future." It was this sort of inquisition that Great Britain had set up at the point of her bayonets. Well might the Australian Government say in their letter of protest--"Australia has been told that the war was a miners' war but not for Chinese miners, a war for the franchise but not for Chinese franchise. The truth, if it had to be told, would have presented a very different aspect, and would have made a very different appeal to Australia." It would, indeed, have made a very different appeal to the British public. Would there have been so much killing of Kruger with our mouths had we known that a white proletariat would not be wanted--in Lord Milner's words--that the white labourer was not to be allowed into the Transvaal because his trade unions would shackle the enterprise of the Rand lords; that yellow slaves would have to be introduced in the disguise of indentured labour; that these labourers would be whipped and tortured into doing their work? Had they known that on the Witwatersrand the average number of Chinamen flogged daily for one month was forty-two--Sundays included--would there have been so much Rule Britannia and music-hall Jingoism? It is quite true, of course, that had the British people accepted the principle of importing Chinese labour into the Transvaal it would be quite fair to blame, as Lord Salisbury was always so fond of blaming, the system for the cruelty that inevitably followed. But the British public have never accepted the principle of importing Chinese labourers into the Transvaal. They have always been deliberately opposed to it, as has every part of the British Empire. They are not to blame, therefore, for the state of affairs on the Rand. As to the insane flogging administered for an offence, it cannot be better described than by giving another quotation from Mr. Boland's letter to the _Morning Leader_. Here is the method of procedure:--