a year. It was a disgrace and a blot on the educational system, he said, and he wanted to know how it had come about and why it was not wiped away.
Much of his spare time was devoted to studying local government; and the Stout-Vogel coalition found in him a valuable assistant when it took the subject into consideration and revolutionized the colony’s system. In 1884 he seized upon the unsatisfactory position of the people in regard to public auctions, and submitted a Bill to Parliament to deal with auctioneers, providing for the rendering of account sales, when required, to persons interested in auctions, and for the issuing of auctioneers’ licenses. At that time auction sales might be held at any time of the day or night, but this Bill provided, in the interest of producers, that no sales should be held at night except stock sales which could not be finished in the day time. For seven years he appeared before the House with his Bill, and finally induced Parliament to pass it soon after he entered Mr. Ballance’s Ministry. Under it the license fees go to local bodies; night auctions, except in connection with cattle sales, are prohibited; pawnbrokers are not allowed to hold auctioneers’ licenses; and in order to protect the public against fraud, account sales must be rendered within fourteen days.
The first Bill he introduced into Parliament was one of the measures he had devised to relieve the miners of the heavy burdens under which they laboured. His proposal was to abolish the gold duty. The speech he made in support of this Bill had been very carefully prepared. He pointed out in the first place that the West Coast up to that time had exported large quantities of gold. As it was purely a goldfields district the inhabitants had to import all their goods; and seeing that the miners had to pay heavy duties on those goods, he contended that, with the gold duty, the West Coast people paid more to the revenue than was fair.
He contended that the miners of the colony had not received justice at the hands of the Legislature. The population of the Coast was 13,000; but not more than 4,000 were actually engaged in working on the goldfields. If the same rate had been imposed upon the export of wool, he added, there would
