questions of the hour. The contests are inexpensive,
and there is very little of the cynical blackmailing of candidates and
open subsidising by members which jar so unpleasantly on the observer
of English constituencies. Indeed, cynicism is by no means a fault of
New Zealand political life. The most marked failings are, perhaps, the
savagely personal character of some of its conflicts, and a general
over-strained earnestness and lack of sense of proportion or humour.
Newspapers and speeches teem with denunciations which might have been
in place if hurled at the corruption of Walpole, the bureaucracy of
Prussia, the finance of the _Ancien Regime_, or the treatment of
native races by the Spanish conquerors of the New World. Nor is
bitterness confined to wild language in or out of parliament. The
terrible saying of Gibbon Wakefield, fifty years ago, that in Colonial
politics "every one strikes at his opponent's heart," has still
unhappily some truth in it. The man who would serve New Zealand in any
more brilliant fashion than by silent voting or anonymous writing must
tread a path set with the thorns of malice, and be satisfied to find a
few friends loyal and a few foes chivalrous.

Chapter XXI

SOME BONES OF CONTENTION

"Now who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten who in ears and eyes
Match me; we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that; whom shall my soul believe?"

During the ten years beginning in 1879 New Zealand finance was little
more than a series of attempts to avert deficits. In their endeavours
to raise the revenue required for interest payments on the still
swelling public debt, and the inevitably growing departmental
expenditure, various treasurers turned to the Customs. In raising
money by duties they received support both from those who wished to
protect local industries and from those who wished to postpone the
putting of heavy taxation upon land. Sir Harry Atkinson, the treasurer
who carried the chief protectionist duties, used to disclaim being
either a protectionist or a free-trader. The net result of various
conflicts has been a tariff which is protectionist, but not highly
protectionist. The duties levied on New Zealand imports represent
twenty-four per cent. of the declared value of the goods. But the
highest duties, those on spirits, wine, beer, sugar, tea, and tobacco,
are not intentionally protectionist; they are