162 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



Despite his own vigorous championship of Protection, that gentleman 

 secured for his Treasurer Mr. Edward Langton, the most outspoken 

 Free Trader in the Assembly. And the Cabinet was somewhat of a 

 reflex of the two leading spirits. Mr. J. W. Stephen and Mr. G. 

 B. Kerferd were the Law Officers ; Mr. J. J. Casey took charge of 

 the Lands Department, and Mr. Duncan Gillies the control of the 

 rapidly expanding railway system. The Custom House was super- 

 vised by Mr. Edward Cohen, a Melbourne merchant, and to Mr. 

 Angus Mackay, of Bendigo, was allotted the care of the mining 

 industry. Half the Cabinet was composed of Protectionists, the 

 other half held by the principles of Free Trade. Half had been 

 abettors of McCulloch's raid on the Constitution, others had been 

 prominent in denouncing it. The public fervently hoped that the 

 coalition would bring at least temporary political peace. 



The Francis Ministry made the fourteenth that in a period of six- 

 teen years had succeeded in snatching a brief, and too often uneasy 

 tenure of power. Absurd and injurious as were these continuous 

 changes in the direction of public affairs, and disastrous as was the 

 hindrance they presented to the moulding of necessary legislation, 

 they were the price the colony paid for lessons in the art of self- 

 government. Each little group, as it wrested power from its 

 opponents, sought to distinguish its own regime by some important 

 advance in democratic principles. It chanced that the Francis 

 Government lighted on Education as a popular and pressing topic, 

 and their twelve months' reign was signalised by the passage of the 

 Act on that subject which, with a few unimportant additions, is 

 still the law of the colony. Many circumstances combined to 

 make the time opportune, probably the most forcible being the 

 bitter sectarian strife engendered by the debates which preceded the 

 downfall of Duffy's Ministry. Yet the public demand was not of 

 recent origin. The waste of energy and money attendant on the 

 rivalries of the National and Denominational Boards was rightly 

 regarded as a scandal. 



As far back as 1858 Mr. Michie had fathered a Bill to create 

 uniform secular instruction by the State, and to authorise the use 

 of the school buildings for religious instruction outside of the 

 defined school hours, It was neither to be free nor compulsory ; 



