178 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



still employed, and with modern appliances they got through much 

 more work than three times their number had done in the early 

 fifties. For they were backed up by 1,100 steam engines, repre- 

 senting the power of 24,000 horses, and valued at over 2,000,000 

 sterling. Since the days of the Eureka stockade mining legislation 

 had been progressively liberal and considerate. Under the Act 

 establishing Courts of Mines full justice had been done to this 

 class of toilers, their only grievance being the repeated failures 

 of Parliament to come to any final decision on the complicated 

 question of mining on private property. In the matter of taxation 

 they had suffered with the farmers in the cause of Protection to 

 native industry. But an oblique attack on the pocket never arouses 

 the resentment which a smaller direct demand creates, and it was 

 recognised that the miner could be much more easily ignored than 

 the town artisan and labourer with his effective powers of com- 

 bination at election times. 



To the many changes of Government recorded there is to be 

 added a change of Governors. Sir J. H. Manners-Button, who 

 had in 1870 succeeded to the title of Viscount Canterbury, left 

 for England in March, 1873, in the same unostentatious manner 

 as he had entered upon his office six and a half years before. It 

 had indeed been a troublous period for a Governor, and though 

 in the heat of controversy his actions were occasionally assailed 

 by both sides in the press ; though at the outset McCulloch would 

 have bullied him and Higinbotham ignored him, yet it is certain 

 that, when passion allowed reason to be heard, all parties were 

 ready to admit that Lord Canterbury had held the scales with 

 strict judicial impartiality. A careful student of constitutional law, 

 he had ample capacity to use it for his own guidance, even when it 

 did not run on the lines desired by his Ministerial advisers. 



His successor, Sir George Ferguson Bowen, came to Victoria 

 from the Government of New Zealand, having had fourteen years' 

 experience in presiding over Australasian Colonies. To judge by 

 the two stout volumes, Thirty Years of Colonial Government, 

 which he has given to the world, he would appear to have been 

 an exceptionally brilliant administrator, upon whom the applause of 

 the populace and the fervid encomiums of his Imperial employers 



