lose £330,000 a year. No wonder George Reid reckons it a good bargain!" (Cf. Appendix C.)
The odds seem, on the face of it, to be against federation in Western Australia. Yet here, again, after all, opposition may melt away. The Premier is not in a hurry to go to the referendum. Mr Reid, shortly before his fall, thought it worth while to send him a rather blustering telegram, reminding him of his pledges, and threatening him and his with every penalty which can be visited on the backslider. (Somehow telegrams do not make altogether for diplomacy.) But the Bill, which has suffered drastic amendment from the Select Committee of the two Houses in Perth, must be submitted, in the end, to the people. And then, it is to be remembered that, whatever may be the course taken by the older population, the majority of the adult males of the colony are new-comers from "the other side "; who care little for the agriculture of their latest home, but a great deal for a cheap breakfast-table; who owe it to the management of Perth that they have mostly, till this referendum, been without a vote, and are likely to use their new power against their late masters; finally, who will refuse to be influenced by fiscal considerations, because the Australian working-man, in the plenitude of his power, as we have seen, always refuses to tax himself.
The obstacles to a perfectly complete federation of Australia are thus worst, perhaps, in the final lap. But in Western Australia, as was the case in Queensland, the conflict of local animosities and interests is so confused that men are as likely as not at any moment to turn, in sheer weariness and bewilderment, to the simple panacea of the Commonwealth. For Australia as a whole, federation, in the end, is now not only inevitable, but desirable, as the only hope of permanent security against the foreigner, and the very beginning of a national life. And the Empire
