out, and I was unanimously chosen; and that the exception might not be wanted to confirm the rule, one member of the late Government against whose official conduct I had levelled a vote of censure a few months before, growled that he had not been consulted. When a member of the House of Commons has been raised to the Chair, he has reached a region where criticism does not follow him; the rulings of the private member of yesterday are received as oracular. But in colonies manners are freer, and less punctilious. Two former Speakers had to learn their business after they came to office, and some of their old antagonists were not disposed to make their task an easy one. I had the same experience, but I was long familiar with the law and practice of Parliament. In one respect a Speaker stands at a serious disadvantage. When a judge has to decide a point of law he fixes the time to do so at his discretion, or if necessary intimates that he will consult his colleagues before deciding. But a Speaker's rulings must be prompt and decisive, on pain of forfeiting his authority. I remember still-that it was sport to me, when some mischievous member specified some difficulty which overwhelmed him, to dispose of the matter in a Parliamentary axiom of six words. I laugh still to think of a case in which a Parliamentary gladiator complained in pathetic tones that he was perplexed by two decisions of the Speaker which he could not possibly reconcile, and he besought my guidance in his difficulty. What must he do to tranquillise his mind? He had altogether mistaken the points at issue, and I simply said, "What the honourable member must do is to study the Standing Orders."
In my second year of office a political crisis sprung up of which I was only a spectator; it belongs not to this personal narrative, but to the history of Victoria. This was the trouble:—
Payment of members had been for some years in existence as an experiment, and the period specified in the Act establishing it was about to come to an end. To me it seemed that it was a natural complement of the principle involved in the abolition of Property Qualification, the principle of opening the legislature to the industrial classes. During the McCulloch régime a Select Committee on the subject had
