In no instance is the centralizing tendency of the government in young countries and amidst scanty populations more visible than in their management of new towns; and it never struck me more forcibly than at Wallaroo and Moonta. It is either necessary, or the government thinks that it is necessary, that everything should be arranged for the new-coming inhabitants, and that they should be called upon to manage nothing for themselves. Roads and bridges are made from the taxes. The land is divided out into its sections by the government. Any comer may buy his section at a certain price, and may build his house,--but he must deal with the government officers, and must build his house according to specification. The idea, no doubt, is not only compatible with freedom of action, but is intended to encourage it, and springs from a theory of democratic equality. It is the duty of the government to see that one man does not ride over another, that the smallest and the poorest may have their share of the public wealth of the community,--that as far as possible there shall be no very small men and no very big men. The Utopian politician travels as far as he can away from the despotism of patriarchal rule, but he travels in a circle and comes back to it. The minister, though he be chosen by the people, becomes a despot; and, like other despots, he is forced to rule so that he may please his favourites. The favourites of the minister in a democratic community are they who can support him in parliament; and on their behalf he finds himself too often forced to read the law either this way or that. In these mining townships the land sold for building had been sold with certain protective privileges. They who bought were not only entitled to keep shops, but were encouraged to buy land by the assurance that no shops should be kept by others within a certain distance outside the township. Consequently no miner’s wife can buy an ounce of tea, or a yard of ribbon, or a delf cup, without going out of the bigger concourse of people to the lesser to make her purchase; nor can the miner, if he fancies that the prices at Kadina or at Moonta are too high for him, try the question by opening a rival shop for himself in his own immediate locality. In these large mining villages nothing can be bought and nothing sold. In reality the man when he has constructed a house has not even a house to sell. He should have built it in the official town if he desired to avail himself of his property.