At the
end of 1856 another Governor--Sir Henry Barkly--arrived; and during the
seven years of his stay the new system worked smoothly enough, the only
peculiarity being the rapid changes in the Government. Some of the
Ministries lasted only six weeks, and very few protracted their
existence to a year.

[Illustration: COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE.]

#2. The Deadlock.#--Sir Henry Barkly left the colony in 1863, and his
place was immediately filled by Sir Charles Darling, nephew of Sir Ralph
Darling, who, forty years before, had been Governor of New South Wales.
Sir Charles was destined to troublous times; for he had not been long in
the colony ere a most vexatious hitch took place in the working of
constitutional government. It arose out of a straggle with regard to
what is called "Protection to Native Industry".

The colony was filled with vigorous and enterprising men, who had come
to it for the purpose of digging for gold. For four or five years gold
digging had been on the average a fairly remunerative occupation. But
when all the surface gold had been gathered, and it became necessary to
dig shafts many hundreds of feet into the earth, and even then in many
cases only to get quartz, from which the gold had to be extracted by
crushing and careful washing, then the ordinary worker, who had no
command of capital, had to take employment with the wealthier people,
who could afford to sink shafts and wait for years before the gold
appeared. These men, therefore, had to take small wages for toiling at a
most laborious occupation. But most of them had learnt trades of some
sort in Europe; and the idea sprang up that if the colony prevented
boots from coming into it from outside there would be plenty of work
for the bootmakers; if it stopped the importation of engines there would
no longer be any reason why engineers should work like navvies at the
bottom of gold mines--they would be wanted to make the engines of the
colony. After a long agitation, therefore, James M'Culloch, the Premier
of the colony, in 1864 brought a bill into the Victorian Legislative
Assembly according to which taxes were to be placed on all goods coming
into the colony if they were of a sort that might be made within the
colony. M'Culloch proposed to make this change because it was ardently
desired by the working men of the colony, and these could by their votes
control the action of the Legislative Assembly. But the Upper House,
called the Legislati