come and live in Perth; for Western Australia holds that it pays its legislators to legislate, and requires of them whole-hearted devotion to the service of the state for their £300 a year salary. He had already made his garden. The front lawn was sown with grass and sanded over, and he was busied in making a vegetable garden in the sand, in which early spring flowers were showing even then.
Inside, the rooms were large and well furnished, the bedrooms opening on to the broad, shady verandah that faced what would eventually be the lawn. As we drove away the Premier pointed out a small wooden house in a tiny plot of ground—that, he said, is all a man can do without state aid for the same money.
As to the financial part of the scheme, it is regulated on no principle of extravagant philanthropy, but is conceived on a sound commercial basis, to repay the Government the interest of 4½% on the capital expended. The payments of the tenants are calculated on a basis of 5%, with a rebate of ½% on punctual payment. The land on which their houses stand is inalienable, that is, at the end of ninety-nine years it reverts to the state, and in the meantime the owner cannot dispose of it except to the Government, who will take it back on a valuation, allowing compensation
