Private Enterprise.

But it will be found upon enquiry that private enterprise has, hitherto, only meant that the merchant or lawyer has been, too often an Old Man of the Sea upon the back of poor Sinbad turned farmer. Indeed, a farmer in a large way may be said, not infrequently, to carry a merchant or his chief clerk on his back; even the despised "cockatoo" is a bird not too small for crushing in the folds of the boa-constrictor, as I will show by a typical case. By hard work a certain small farmer was able to take up and partly pay for a block of land containing about 200 acres, which was mortgaged to a merchant at about £4 an acre. The farmer was forced to transact his business, under very inconvenient terms, through his mortgagee, who, when he found that his client had a small pention of land unmortgaged, tried his "little best," which was no small thing in meanness, to get the poor "cockie" well in his folds. When the interest was a little over due, and the grain was either in stook or in the stack, the merchant said he would have to charge 5½% commission for the overdue interest, but when the meek farmer objected, consented to put at the bottom of the agreement that the commission should be deducted if the debtor sold his grain to his creditor. The merchant took all the grain but the barley, with which he would have nothing to do, but when the farmer made arrangements to ship it to Melbourne through another firm, the personification of the advantages of private enterprise bounced his client into giving him an order to get half the barley, the other having been put on shipboard. Both lots were of equal quality, and sold in the same market, but, when the farmer got the account sale he found to his cost that the mortgagee's charges made him a loser to the extent of some pounds by the division of the barley, j besides the loss of one bag, which went astray. Seeing that a prolonged acquaintance with the steady-going merchant would cause the loss of both the mortgaged and the free land, the farmer by a lucky arrangement was able to effect a fresh mortgage and pay off the merchant instead of being sent off his land. When he tried to square up accounts, he found that the merchant would not entertain his claim for the refund of the 5½ per cent commission, and threatened to have the man locked up because he would not let the memo, out of his hands. I dare say some of you can estimate the amount of "side" that a big grain merchant can occasionally put on. Well, I must finish my tale which is worth the time it has page 7 occupied, as it is a fair type of many j farmers' experiences. Having obtained a lawyer's advice to take out a summons for the refund of the commission, in due course the