Wellington that the Government would first be reduced to a majority that would be too small to be workable, and would then be killed by a no-confidence motion.
Mr. Seddon was first attacked on the fact that the head officer of the Public Works Department had been attracted to Australia by a higher salary than the Government would agree to give him. The attack was led by Mr. T. Fergus, whom Mr. Seddon had displaced from the Public Works portfolio. Mr. Fergus condemned the whole management of the department, and, apparently, made out a strong case, until Mr. Seddon showed the House that any blame in connection with the department could be traced directly to the management of his predecessor. Other members came to support Mr. Fergus. Mr. Seddon became impatient and angry, and in a few minutes the whole House was launched into a bitter discussion, which reviewed the whole policy of the department for the past ten or twelve years.
Mr. Seddon was not in need of support. He was much more than a match on the ground of his own departments for all the men who could be brought against him. There were several Liberals, however, who stepped forward to express their sense of the justice with which he had acted. Among these was Mr. A. Saunders, who had been returned for Selwyn at the general election. He had been chairman of the Royal Commission appointed some years previously to inquire into the position of the Civil Service, and he had strongly advocated the very course of action Mr. Seddon was successfully adopting. In his inquiries into the Public Works Department, Mr. Saunders had found that there was a very anomalous state of affairs. Highly paid men were often employed at work that men of little special ability could do, highly qualified engineers being set to discharge the duties of accountants, inspectors, and clerks. To make a show of finding employment for a host of engineers at high salaries, absurd regulations had been adopted. A common railway siding could not be erected without the presence of two engineers, one from the Construction Department to decide how such an important work should be done, and one from the Maintenance Staff to see how the siding could
