Moreover, all such heroic schemes of taxation in the interest of the British taxpayer, of which Sir David Barbour's report is a type, are based on proleptic statistics of an expansion which after all is problematical, and which in any case will not become solid fact if onerous conditions are imposed upon the Rand in advance of that expansion. The profits from the mines, great as they ought to be if we do not strangle the goose right away, are ephemeral profits--thirty to fifty years will see the last of them. Possibly the high-water mark of production will be reached twenty years hence, and from that time the decline will begin as in the case of the Australian and Californian mines. It is obvious, therefore, that a heavy war debt must press disastrously on the industry during its growth and during its decline. Taxation seems to have been proposed on the basis of the anticipation, as if it were already an accomplished fact, of the most prosperous days possible of attainment by the industry, and in entire obliviousness of the fact that no sooner is the zenith reached than gradual decline, ending in extinction, must supervene. Unjust taxation would be a suicidal policy; it would retard the flow of capital, render all but a few higher-grade mines unprofitable, with the result that the budgets of the new colonies would show deficits year after year. Not only would capital awaiting employment be frightened into other channels, but schemes of federation would remain sterile schemes; and the hope of a prosperous and united South Africa would continue a mere day-dream, impossible of accomplishment.