motions, and a quorum of members could hardly be induced to attend and listen to the debates, some of which closed without a division, the House simply drifting into the regular work of the session.
Late in 1885, the unemployed trouble, which had previously made Christchurch its headquarters, shifted north and south, and established itself in Auckland and Dunedin. In Dunedin, a flaming manifesto was issued begging the Victorian Government to come to the rescue of New Zealand and send steamers to take workmen to Melbourne, the fares to be paid with the men’s first earnings in Australia.
The Government was quite out of touch with the working classes. It ignored them and they distrusted it. At the same time they believed that it was better than its predecessor. As a matter of fact, however, Atkinson was, theoretically, at any rate, in closer sympathy with them than either of the leaders of the Government. Sir Julius Vogel was a Conservative in principle and practice. In England he had been a Conservative candidate for the Falmouth seat, and all his leanings were towards the old Conservative school of politicians. Sir Robert Stout was a Radical in regard to the land question, but he held aloof from the principle of State interference in private enterprise.
The Government, in fact, was a hybrid organism. It was half-Radical, half-Conservative, and wholly Individualistic. Although Stout and Vogel stood far apart in most political principles, they found in extreme individualism a common ground. Vogel held the comfortable doctrine that if labour became dominant it would be as hard on capital as capital was on it. He could never decide in his own mind whether it would be better for the happiness of the community to give labour or capital the greater political power, so he tried to balance the scales.
He saw a long way ahead of him. He believed that Radicalism would ultimately prevail, but that “Conservative Radicalism” would be the happy medium which would restrain capital from being too exacting and labour from demanding more than capital would be in a position to grant. Socialism in
