On the following day, Sir A. J. Cadman joined the Ministry as Commissioner of Stamp Duties, and a few weeks later Sir Joseph Ward took charge of the Postal and Telegraph Department; and a Liberal Government, in office for the second time in the colony’s history, started upon the remarkable career with which the name of Mr. Seddon is closely associated.
As Conservative critics pointed out, it was almost an entirely new team. Mr. Ballance and Sir P. Buckley were the only members of it who had held ministerial office before. It had a bare working majority of six, and arrayed against it there were the talent and experience of the party that had held power almost continuously since the beginning of responsible government. Against it, also, it had the leading newspapers of the colony, with two exceptions, and the unreasoning prejudice of a large section of the community, which did not realise the change and the revolution of thought that had been brought about.
A short Governor’s Speech, composed of a few sentences, left no doubt as to the kind of policy that would be placed before Parliament. It was distinctly stated that measures would be submitted to improve the relations between labour and capital, and to promote the cause of industrial progress, while one clause, which plainly bears signs of the work of the new Minister of Mines, stated that “earnest attention will be given to the development of the vast mineral resources of the colony, and much can be done to further the mining interests at a moderate cost.”
The Liberal Party’s opponents had frequently stated that the Liberals in power would be entirely different from the Liberals in opposition, and that when they reached the ministerial benches their advanced labour programme would be thrown to the winds, and they would drop into the old practice of doing as little as possible, as long as they kept things going and saw that sufficient revenue was received from the people to meet the expenses of government. Even after the Speech had
