f to the mastery of uninteresting minds and
unappetizing details; above all, he must be generous and considerate
to lieutenants who have their own views and their own followers, and
who expect to have their full share of credit and influence. In one
word, he should be what Ballance was and Grey was not. Nevertheless,
one of Grey's courage, talent, and prestige was not likely to fail to
leave his mark upon the politics of the country; nor did he. Though he
failed to pass the reforms just mentioned, he had the satisfaction of
seeing them adopted and carried into law, some by his opponents, some
by his friends. Only one of his pet proposals seems to have been
altogether lost sight of, his oft-repeated demand that the Governor of
the Colony should be elected by the people.

The Grey Ministry had committed what in a Colonial Cabinet is the one
unpardonable crime--it had encountered a commercial depression, with
its concomitant, a shrunken revenue. When Hall and Atkinson succeeded
Grey with a mission to abolish the land-tax, they had at once to
impose a different but more severe burden. They also reduced--for a
time--the cost of the public departments by the rough-and-ready method
of knocking ten per cent. off all salaries and wages paid by the
treasury, a method which, applied as it was at first equally to low
and high, had the unpopularity as well as the simplicity of the
poll-tax. That retrenchment and fresh taxation were unpleasant
necessities, and that Hall and Atkinson more than once tackled the
disagreeable task of applying them, remains true and to their credit.

Between 1880 and 1890 the colonists were for the most part resolutely
at work adapting themselves to the new order of things--to lower
prices and slower progress. They increased their output of wool and
coal--the latter a compensation for the falling-off of the gold. They
found in frozen meat an export larger and more profitable than wheat.
Later on they began, with marked success, to organize co-operative
dairy factories and send cheese and butter to England. Public affairs
during the decade resolved themselves chiefly into a series of
expedients for filling the treasury and carrying on the work of land
settlement. Borrowing went on, but more and more slowly. Times did not
soon get better.

In 1885 and 1886 the industrial outlook was perhaps at its worst. In
1887, Atkinson and Whitaker, coming again into power, with Hall as
adviser, administered a second