it ought to throw a side-light on the South African problem, and assist us towards a settlement in that perturbed quarter. It at least may induce us to see that the Transvaal troubles have arisen not entirely because of the perverted ambitions of Dutch politicians and the fanatical pride of the Dutch burghers, but also through natural causes-causes which operate even where there is no racial dissension to exacerbate the conflict of interests. It is the ancient quarrel between Town and Country, between the New Settlers and the Old, between the Agrarian interest and the Financial. It is not peculiar to Africa or to Australia; but it is sure to arise in the most acute form when a population of villagers and farmers, who have possessed a monopoly of political power, find themselves in danger of being swamped by an inrush of mining immigrants from the outside world. The older settlers, conservatives, and lovers of tradition, as those who are rooted to the soil tend to be, do not like the strangers, with their hustling ways and disturbing ideas. The dislike is usually returned with interest. Each party has a certain contempt for the other. The prospector has no patience with a man who would rather be comfortable than rich; the countryman looks down on the cockney, who cannot shoot or ride, and sits all day behind an office desk. The farmer feels too that he is really the citizen with a stake in the country.' There he has been born, there he will lay his bones, there he hopes his children will live and die after him. The Uitlander' he thinks is different. He is a migratory creature, here to-day, gone to-morrow; leaving his womankind behind him in some distant land, and ready to depart as soon as he has scraped his 'pile' out of the earth. The sentiment was candidly avowed by Mr. S. H. Parker, Q.C., the representative of Sir John Forrest and the West Australian Ministry, at the Conference of Australian Delegates held at the Colonial Office on the 5th of April. Sir Philip Fysh, the Agent-General for Tasmania, was cross-questioning Mr. Parker on the alleged wrongs of the Coolgardie miners, and tried to show that these settlers were practically unrepresented in the Perth Assembly. I give the questions and answers from the Minutes of the Proceedings in the latest blue-book.3

Sir P. Fysh: You say your settled districts would be represented by about 45,000 people, who eight years ago were the numbers of your census; and since then you say that 120,000 have come in by the reasonable advantages offered by the larger population, and chiefly by the attraction of the goldfields: however, put in your own way, it is a question between 100,000 and 70,000—100,000 in the settled places and 70,000 in the goldfields-therefore the protection with respect to the products of your people would be considerably limited so far as the number of the population is concerned. The greater portion of your population would be those who have to pay the extra price by reason of this tariff which you propose to impose. That is what I wish to make out.

3 Cd. 158, p. 44.

Mr. Parker: Probably.

Sir P. Fysh: You accept that?

Mr. Parker: The portions, but you must bear in mind although it is the greater portion of the population it is not the best portion of the population of the colony, because, after all, it is those who settle, those who produce, who are the most desirable colonists. That is why we desire if possible to encourage those engaged in agricultural and industrial pursuits.

When we recollect that this is the statement of a highly educated and intelligent colonial lawyer, voicing the sentiments of a body of voters of our own blood and race, we may make some allowance for the obstinate Dutch Conservatism that has led to disaster. The attempt to stem back the tide of modern innovating progress is wrong and must be futile; but it is not wholly unnatural.

The second point brought out by the West Australian crisis is the deplorable neglect of the Imperial authorities in saddling a colony with the burden of a responsibility utterly disproportionate to its means and capacity. It ought not to be a West Australian question at all. What excuse can we plead for handing over to the few thousand electors, thinly scattered along a fringe of coast, the disposal of a million square miles of country, which even in 1893 was known to be rich in minerals? When Western Australia received full parliamentary government it had 60,000 inhabitants; and the area they were expected to control is 1,500 miles long and 1,000 miles wide. The population of Westmoreland to rule a territory larger than Great Britain, France, Germany, and Austria, taken together! The idea is absurd, and a culpable disregard of the future interests of the Australian continent was shown in carrying it into practice. The result is that within seven years of the grant of the Constitution half the inhabitants of the colony are simmering with fierce discontent, agitating for separation, and threatening revolt if it is denied them. No wonder the burghers made mistakes. If you put a child in charge of a complicated machine, needing scientific knowledge and skill, you cannot be surprised if the works go wrong.

Even now it is not certain that we are realising the full measure of the responsibility towards Western Australia cast upon the Colonial Office by the laxity of Mr. Chamberlain's two immediate predecessors. 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. The Federal Parliament would have no power to compel the dominant party in the Perth Assembly either to redistribute seats fairly, or to divide the colony, so as to create 'Home Rule for the Rand.' True, we should have washed our hands of the affair, and could tell the malcontent Uitlanders that it was none of our business. But if Perth still remained obstinate, and Coolgardie in consequence began to carry out some of those ugly projects hinted at by Dr. Thurston, it might become our business in an embarrassing fashion. At any rate, it does not seem quite fair to the new Commonwealth to start it in life with this grave question, still unsettled, upon its hands.

The real difficulty in dealing with the internal affairs of the colonies, and even with regulating their relations towards one another, is the undefined constitutional position in which they stand towards the Imperial Government. The legislative authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom is not denied in theory, but it is scarcely accepted in practice, by colonial statesmen and their constituents. The elector of Victoria does not see what the elector of Lancashire has to do with his affairs. The best colonial constitutionalists, like Mr. Alpheus Todd, almost seem to claim a concurrent and equal status for the various parliaments of the Empire. They do not deny the prerogative of the Crown; in fact they place it a good deal higher than most English writers. The orthodox colonial view is that the Queen rules a colony by the advice of her local Executive Council; what colonists are jealous of is the intrusion of another executive which is nominated by a party majority in Great Britain and Ireland. But as things stand 'the Crown' cannot act except by the advice of a Minister; and stripped of ceremony and technicality it is difficult to see how even the Royal Prerogative in colonial matters can be exercised except at the discretion of the Secretary of State. Thus we get back to the leader of the English partisan majority after all. If we had a true Imperial Ministry-not liable to be thrown out, let us say, on public-houses in Wales or

ground-values in London or some other subject in which the colonies had no interest whatever-it would be different.

The question is a large one, and there is an obvious temptation to believe that there is no occasion even to raise it. But we have had some rude lessons lately, and we must begin to doubt whether, with the increasing complexity of our colonial relations, our present loose and anomalous system can last much longer.

SIDNEY LOW.

SWISS RIFLE CLUBS

ON more than one occasion during the past few months, when the importance of popularising rifle-shooting as a national pastime has been advocated in Parliament and elsewhere, reference has been made to the Swiss system of rifle clubs as simple, practical, and worthy of adoption in the United Kingdom. As an old officer of Volunteers, and commandant on two occasions of the Indian team at Wimbledon, I have long been interested in rifle-shooting; and passing part of my time in Switzerland, and being a member of the local rifle clubs, I have some experience of the system as obtaining in the cantons. The notes thus made may perhaps assist to an understanding of the position, by explaining the great differences in the conditions of the two countries. The recent publication of the Swiss Statistical Abstract for 1899, and an article on rifle clubs by Lieutenant-Colonel Kindler 2 of Zürich, enable me to add the latest figures of the progress of the system throughout the confederation.

Shooting has been a national pastime in Switzerland from time immemorial. The conditions of the country and of the times have favoured it so that the proficiency of the Swiss in their arms of defence has become traditional. Associations and societies for matches and prizes have existed for centuries. Many of the present rifle clubs are the survivals of local clubs established for practice with the cross-bow long before gunpowder was thought of, and preserve in their armouries the records, weapons, and prizes of successive generations of their members. The Federal Government, recognising the importance of the proficiency of the population in the national arm of defence, has dovetailed the system of rifle-clubs into the military organisation on practical lines providing for the convenience of the public and the requirements of the State. The military organisation is fully described in the published text-books on the subject, and, although any detailed statements of the methods is beyond the scope of this article, some few points must be noticed as explaining the connection between the Army and the clubs. It

1 Statist. Jahrbuch der Schweiz, 1899.

2 Illust. Jahrbuch der Schweiz. Armee, 1900.