against him by a temporary coalition of Labour with the direct Reidite Opposition; and Mr Watson came into office as the head of a purely Labour Government, with 25 supporters, 26 in direct Opposition, and 23 on the cross benches. In the next four months, Mr Deakin, developing an unexpected objection to the Labour party's 'caucus' system of internal control, split his own party into halves, and led one half over to the Reidite camp consequently Mr Watson was turned out (on another amendment to the Arbitration Bill), and Mr Reid took office with 12 Deakinites added to his own 26, the other 11 helping the 25 Labour men in a vigorous opposition.

The new Ministry lasted into recess, but was ejected at the beginning of the next session by Mr Deakin. An informal Deakinite-Labour alliance was arranged; the Labour members, being shown a copy of Mr Deakin's programme, undertook to give the Deakin Ministry a general support during this Parliament in the transaction of public business.' A few of the Prime Minister's former followers refused to renew any intimate relations with Labour, and joined with several unwilling followers of Mr Reid to form an Opposition 'Corner'; consequently parties in 1906 and 1907 were distributed thus-Deakinites 19, Labour (supporting the Ministry) 25, direct (Reidite) Opposition 18, Corner 13. The effect on legislation was marked; while, on the one hand, Labour helped to shape a series of Acts affecting commerce (the Copyright, Trademarks, Commerce, Secret Commissions, and Anti-Trusts Acts), on the other hand Mr Deakin was able to explain and modify existing Australian legislation about immigrants by Acts amending the somewhat crude laws of 1901; and time was found to draw up a Constitution for the Commonwealth's first dependency, Papua.

The elections of 1906 were confused by the introduction of two distinct issues. The Ministry went to the country as Protectionists about to revise the tariff; but Labour, as usual, fought on its own platform, leaving fiscal questions severely alone; and Mr Reid, knowing himself hopelessly beaten beforehand on the fiscal issue, proclaimed himself an Anti-Socialist,' meaning thereby an opponent of Labour. The result was as confused as the campaign. Four parties appeared in the House-Mr Deakin's, Protectionist and friendly to Labour, reduced

to 18; Mr Reid's, Free Trade and anti-Labour, 16; Labour itself, increased to 27; and an enlarged Corner, Protectionist but anti-Labour, of 13. The tariff, however, was the most important work to be taken in hand, and on that the Ministry had a clear majority of 18 at least; nor was anyone anxious to embarrass Mr Deakin until the drudgery of tariff-making was over. The achievements of 1907-8 included a heightened tariff with marked preference to British goods, an Old-Age Pensions Act, and an Act granting bounties to certain industries which Australia desires to encourage.

Still, the parliamentary equilibrium was very unstable; and the passage of the tariff in May, 1908, released once more the disintegrating forces. The Labour members' support of Mr Deakin had been always the work of a majority in caucus, and might at any time be removed by the transference of a few votes. Late in 1908 this happened, and Mr Fisher was called on to form a Labour Ministry, which, for the short remainder of the session, was supported by 15 Deakinites sitting in the Ministerial Corner. The removal of the fiscal issue also affected the Opposition Corner, and, in conjunction with the resignation by Mr Reid of the Opposition leadership and the change of Ministry, redistributed the anti-Labour section, so that some 21 were in direct opposition. The movement thus begun gathered strength during a long recess; the early months of 1909 were full of negotiations between the followers of Mr Deakin and those of Mr Cook, who had succeeded Mr Reid; and, just before the session of 1909 opened, Mr Deakin himself was won over to the antiLabour side, and consented to head a 'Fusion' of nonLabour parties which should restore to Parliament the simple mechanism of a two-party system.

In June, 1909, therefore, a Deakin-Cook Ministry, backed by a solid majority of 43 members, faced the 27 Labour men and 4 Deakinites who preferred their old policy to their old leader. Debates became more bitter and more personal than before; and the session would have been entirely wasted, had not the Cook section of the Fusion insisted on a wholesale use of the closure, which, ironically enough, had been legalised at instance of Labour in 1905, but had never yet been put into force. In the end the Fusion put to its credit a

large batch of Acts. Defence (compulsory training), a financial agreement with the State Premiers, a Naval Loan Act to provide funds for the Australian unit of the Imperial Navy, and the appointment of a High Commissioner, were the chief objects of legislation.

But the Fusion was too artificial and too purely parliamentary to please the country. Its leaders, after all, had spent eight years in attacking each other, not on details, but on the fundamental principles of their respective policies. Those who had voted for Mr Reid's nominees in 1906 had done so avowedly from dislike of Mr Deakin; those who had elected not only the Deakinites but also the Corner of 1907 were deliberately hostile to Mr Reid and Mr Cook. The political enmities of eight years were not to be magically conjured into friendships by lobby manoeuvres ; in the elections of 1910 the old hates counted, not the new loves; and on April 13 the Fusion practically disappeared, losing fifteen seats to Labour and finding itself with no distinct active policy of any kind. For practically all its active policy during the previous year had been Mr Deakin's in faint miniature, while that of the Labour group was Mr Deakin's intensified and made more urgent; so that the session of 1910 (during which the Fisher Ministry, with 42 direct supporters and two or three sympathisers from the old Deakin party, faced Mr Deakin and Mr Cook with 12 and 18 followers respectively) was given up almost entirely to the passing in a drastic form of Acts which, in somewhat milder shape, a large section of the Opposition had long wanted to see made law. The rest of the session was spent, either in mending the Fusion's own Acts of 1909 so as to make them really effective (e.g. the Defence Act), or in repealing those which the country evidently disliked (e.g. the Naval Loan Act).

This summary may leave on the reader's mind no very definite impression of the detailed history of these ten years; but it will have brought to light, at all events, three large facts: the steadily growing influence of Labour, the remarkable importance of Mr Deakin, and the hopeless entanglement of party issues.

Let us take the personal element first. It is almost impossible to overstate Mr Deakin's dominance in matters

of Federal policy. Though he was never backed by a majority of his own, and was twice persuaded into coalitions with men who had bitterly attacked him, it was always his policy that Parliament was endeavouring to carry out. Except the principle of compulsion in military training, which he accepted at first half-heartedly, the principles of all important legislation during the whole period were of his preaching, and many of the more essential details were of his devising. He personally arranged the terms on which South Australia surrendered the Northern Territory; he personally wrought with the recalcitrant State Premiers in 1909 till they agreed to the financial scheme which has now superseded the Braddon clause. His alliance with Mr Reid in 1904, no less than his understanding with Labour in 1905, was based on the acceptance of his programme by his allies. Even the Labour-dominated Parliament of 1910 occupied itself mainly with securing results at which he had always aimed; so that, when he, as leader of the Opposition, attacked the Labour Bills, the most effective reply was usually to quote from recent speeches of his own.

Difficult, therefore, as it is to criticise impartially an eminent living politician with a particularly lovable personality, the task can be avoided only at the expense of leaving Australia's recent history unexplained and almost incomprehensible. Criticism there must be; and yet any criticism is likely to be resented both by his friends and by his opponents. For it would be hard to find a man whose public actions can be so easily and so fatally misunderstood until one comes into personal contact with him. The enduring anti-Deakinism of the average New South Wales politician and the Sydney merchant can be justified to a stranger in five minutes. He is untrustworthy, they assert; he threw over Mr Watson in 1904, Mr Reid in 1905, Mr Fisher in 1909, and might throw over Mr Cook at any moment if Labour showed any sign of accepting him as an ally again. As the transformations of 1905 and 1909 resulted in his regaining the position of Prime Minister, the Sydney press proceeded to allege that his sole political guide was self-interest, and explained his ascendancy as due to a combination of persuasive oratory with diplomatic adroitness.

Personal knowledge of the man destroys in an

instant the whole of this lurid imagining. Whatever may be the explanation of his career--and it is not at first apparent-self-interest and diplomatic cunning are the last qualities attributable to him. He is scarcely a politician at all in the ordinary sense; he has never found office desirable for its own sake, and he has struggled far more persistently to avoid it than his fellow-politicians have to attain it. He has persistently refused the High Commissionership, for which he would have been excellently fitted, lest it should seem that the Commonwealth was following the State precedents, and making that position a refuge for tired Prime Ministers s; he has spared time in the middle of a bitter fight to defend men, whom he knew to be attacking him, against accusations which he believed untrue. If private virtues and public spirit could make a statesman, Mr Deakin would rank amongst the highest.

But he is not a statesman; he is a philosopher. He can devise excellently for a nation; he cannot handle men, because he does not understand their mental processes. He takes his own as normal, and proceeds on the assumption that similar material supplied to other people will go through the same processes and produce the same result. Add to this that he is probably unconscious of his own personal charm, and you arrive at some explanation of him. He finds followers accepting his conclusions and supporting his policies; it does not strike him that they do this because they trust him; he thinks they have worked out the conclusions and policies for themselves. When, still pursuing his own line of thought, he turns into bypaths where they cannot follow purely on trust, he is disappointed and puzzled beyond measure.

Again, he is a lawyer, and sometimes seems to regard institutions and forms as ends in themselves, unalterable so long as any other way of achieving an aim, short of alteration, can be devised. He looks on Parliament as an assemblage of independent representatives bound only by their election pledges to their constituents, with the right and the power to convert each other, by full and free discussion, from error to truth. Consequently he detests the 'caucus' system of the Labour party, which destroys the nominal freedom and persuasiveness of parliamentary debate. His political career has