building additional police barracks in our town, what possible reason he could have for thinking that the larger police barracks were required. The settler appeared to think, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, that he had "reason good enough," and frankly owned that its strength consisted in the fact that Government had lately built new barracks in a town fifty miles off, thus incurring the obligation, so our friend thought, to expend a similar sum of money in the town where he resided.
Inasmuch, however, as to eat is a daily necessity, and each prisoner and each warder whose business it is to look after him represents a person requiring to be fed, the Government building contracts are somewhat less eagerly competed for than the contracts for supplying road parties and convict depots with "rations." This word "ration" is as potential in Western Australia as the "all-mighty dollar" in America, and a stranger has gained no insight into the real internal state of the colony until he becomes aware that the pivot on which society turns is the canvassing for the various Government contracts, and that enemies shake hands, and friends become foes, according to the publication of results.
However much this state of things is to be regretted, it is no more than might have been expected in a colony dependent upon a large Government expenditure, and excluded from all ordinary means of making money, save this one of supplying the necessaries of life upon a large scale to an artificial population. The feeding of other people—whether soldiers, sailors, police, or prisoners—and the cost to be defrayed by Government, seemed to be the one panacea for all colonial disasters. Thus I heard it
