Chapter VII.
The Liberal Party in Opposition.
When members went back after the elections there were no well defined parties. Sir Robert Stout’s defeat weakened the Liberals, and many members of the Conservative Party withdrew their support from Sir Harry Atkinson. For a long time they had been dissatisfied with his leadership. They were looking for a new chief. They would, indeed, have asked someone else to move the no-confidence motion in the Stout-Vogel Ministry; but circumstances were far too strong for them, and, it might be added, for Sir Harry himself, as he had no wish to assume the leadership. He accepted it out of a sense of duty and of loyalty to those friends who still stood by him.
The position was described epigrammatically by the Hon. W. P. Reeves, when he said that in the Conservative camp there was a leader without a party, and a party without a leader. Very few members of the Conservative Party disguised their feelings towards Sir Harry Atkinson; they had come to follow another man. To this Sir Harry took no exception, maintaining that it was the duty of all members of the House to accept any place his fellow members might assign to him, and he was prepared to do their bidding.
Even when he moved the successful no-confidence motion against the Stout-Vogel Government, he did not assume anything, but announced that he held the commission temporarily in the interests of those who had gone to the country on a platform in opposition to Sir Julius Vogel. There were strong members of the party who, after Parliament had assembled, would not have followed Sir Harry Atkinson if any one other leader could have been induced to come forward; but as they could get nobody else, they determined to take him.
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