The Melbourne Age, one of the leading Australian papers and
a strong supporter of Protection, has published a remarkable article on Chinese labour in South Africa. We cannot associate ourselves with its wholesale denunciation of capitalists, but there is more than mere invective in ,the indictment of the policy which, in spite of the enormous riches of South Africa, has the practical result of keeping away a white population. Even more striking, coming from a Protectionist organ, is the statement that "Mr. Chamberlain's connection with this policy, open and avowed as it is, will tend more than anything else to put back his policy of Preferential trifle to an inde Anita
future. It is very bard for English working men .w116 read the story of the Transvaal political blunder, in which white workmen's interests have been sacrificed to the greed of unscrupulous capitalism, to believe in the bona fides of its author's policy nearer home." White labour, contends the Age, can do the work required as well in the Transvaal as it does in Australia, adding : "It is the rank infamy of a policy like this which has sunk into every English mind, and which makes almost every by-election turn against the Govern- ment which can support it." The whole article is strongly expressive of Australian opinion towards a Government which has always declared that its policy was aimed at strengthening the ties of Empire, though .on this important question it deliberately, and in our view most injudiciously, refused to consult or to regard that opinion.
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