The longer the freetrade members looked at the new tariff, the less they liked it; and as most of the freetraders came from the country districts and were naturally with the Government, Sir Harry woke up the morning after he had delivered his Statement to find that his party was falling to pieces. Nearly all the freetraders, in fact, were in open revolt.
Before the fatal tariff had been prepared, he counted in his party fifty-four men. Thirty-four of these, known as the “Government Swallowers,” swallowed the tariff proposals without any apparent difficulty; but twenty, distinguished as the “Government Malcontents,” went about crying out against the tariff, and saying that they would have none of its revolutionary proposals.
Ignoring both threats and supplications, Sir Harry said that it was his tariff, and as it was the best he could devise, and as he believed that it was required to save the country, he would stand by it or fall with it.
The tariff proved to be one of those measures in the face of which New Zealand politicians sink party feelings and act for the common good. There were protectionists on both sides of the House, and when the Government found that the withdrawal of free trade followers made it powerless to carry the tariff by its own strength, it applied to the Opposition for sufficient men to make up the deficiency.
This the Opposition agreed to give. When the second reading of the Tariff Bill was voted on, a heavy contingent went from one side of the House to the other, and gave the Government a larger majority than it had ever had before, Ballance, Seddon, W. P. Beeves, Perceval, Lance, Cadman, Ward, and Steward, all strong men in the Liberal ranks, voting for the Government’s measure, in the same lobby as Atkinson, Hall, Hislop, and other members of the opposing party.
In this way the Liberal Party followed the course Mr. Seddon had mapped out for it, and freely offered to help the Conservative Government when it felt that help, not obstruction, was in the colony’s interests.
With the aid of those Liberal members, item after item of the tariff went through without much difficulty, until the
