South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 1900.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2763, 18 April 1900, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 1900.

It Is a remarkable thing that while a vast British army is fighting the Boers, nominally at least because the Boers, a pastoral and old settled people 1 refused the franchise to newly settled gold-digging immigrants, a similar ground for conflict exists within one of Britain’s own colonies. The diggers of Western Australia have issued a manifesto, drawn up on the model of the petition to the Queen from the Transvaal Uitlanders—a good deal of it simply clipped from this document— setting forth just such wrongs as the Uitlanders complained of .The diggers say they are practically denied manhood suffrage, which is the law of the colony, by restrictive conditions of enrolment. They number two-fifths of the population of the colony, and have only 3 out of 24 members in the Upper, and 6 out of 44 in the Lower House. There are three old electorates with less than 100 on the roll, each of which .returns a member, while 5674 electors in East Ooolgardie have only one. The diggers complain that they are heavily taxed for the benefit of the farmers and pastoralists, who also are given the benefit of low railway rates, while materials to and from the gold fields have to pay high rates. They complain that there is a heavy income tax on all gold mine profits, whether these are divided in dividends or spent in developing the mines, and the gold fields are denied the most convenient railway facilities, so as to compel the goldfields traffic to pass through Perth and Fremantle. They say that Weatralia stands out of the Commonwealth, because the ministry who have the upper hand politically, are now able to over-tax the majority, and they could not do this if the colony became a province of the Commonwealth. It is a strange commentary on the position in South Africa, that nearly the same political conditions that produced war there, exist in a British colony.