The Second Parliament.
Sir Edmund Barton, on becoming a Judge of the High Court, was succeeded in his Premiership by Mr. Deakin; and public opinion was soon tested by a General Election (December, 1908). The Ministry put forward a progressive programme, of which the principal planks were a tariff preference for British products, and a compulsory reference to judicial determination of all industrial disputes which extended beyond the limits of one State. On the local question of Protection or Free Trade there was to be a fiscal truce. The attitude of the Opposition as it was voiced in New South Wales was negative and critical; but, none the less, Mr. Reid, its leader, who has an unrivalled facility of platform speech—'fluent as a water-spout after rain' was a description of him by Sir Henry Parkes—carried the mother colony triumphantly against the Government. Since, however, his success was due to appeals to local and sectarian prejudices, it did not win him much support in the other States. It is characteristic of the man and of the short memory of Australian voters, when it is not jogged by the newspapers, that within six months of declaring to his supporters that the fiscal issue could not be dropped, and that the Victorian and Catholic sympathies of the Barton Ministry had been a menace to the liberties of New South Wales, Mr. Reid should have accepted office as the leader of a coalition based upon a fiscal truce, and taken for his colleague in the Premiership, having equal power, a Victorian who is also a Catholic!
The session proved remarkable for rapid Ministerial changes (Deakin, Watson, Reid); but its only legislative result was a truncated Arbitration Act, which, it is safe to prophesy, will remain a dead letter on the Statute Book. This measure was passed through its final stages by Mr. Reid, although he had denounced it at the time he was in Opposition. Barren, however, as
