be reduced as each child reached the age of fifteen. The contributions were to be compulsory, and were to be collected by staffs of inspectors and other officers.
Mr. W. Rolleston, Minister for Lands, was more successful. He gave the colony a liberal and progressive Land Act, which ranks as the best piece of legislation of its kind at that time in the Australasian colonies.
Sir George Grey also made a grand tour, following closely upon Sir Harry Atkinson’s heels; but the Liberal leader’s “mana” was gone. People listened to him with patience, but not with the spirit he had aroused when he offered them his Liberal Policy. They only stared when he thundered forth his magnificent phrases. His words, once accepted as those of a great reformer, now created alarm. His own people accused him openly of misrepresenting material facts and misquoting important figures. They said that he deliberately schemed to estrange the artizans of the towns from the rest of the community and to throw classes into angry estrangement. “You can always claim our friendship,” he was told, “but you shall never again command our confidence as a leader.”
The split in the Liberal Party threw party politics into ridiculous confusion. There were three solid parties. One followed the Government, another constituted the main Opposition, under Mr. W. Montgomery, and the third, a Middle Opposition Party, was led by Grey. Each was in a minority, and none could work effectively without assistance from one of the others. As nothing would induce the two Opposition parties to come together, the Government held office by the will of its opponents and on account of dissensions in their camp. In the first session of 1884, however, the Opposition went sufficiently far into a compromise as to agree to force the Government to a dissolution, with the hope that the country itself would break the deadlock, and, by readjusting things, make a change which would place a fairly strong Government in power.
Probably the change would have been very slight had not another element, which placed quite a different complexion on the position, and entirely altered the course of history, entered
