210 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



Ministry applied to the Governor for a dissolution, which the 

 Marquis of Normanby promptly conceded. This nobleman, who 

 was in his sixtieth year when he assumed the Governorship of 

 Victoria, was politically inconspicuous during his five years' ad- 

 ministration, as becomes a Governor who knows his business. He 

 was somewhat more exclusive in his official hospitality than the 

 colonists had been used to, and while he failed to evoke any 

 enthusiasm he provoked no animosity. His easy-going, listless 

 manner conveyed the impression of indifference, but he was well 

 posted in the traditions of his office, and knew exactly the position 

 of the line which defined the Crown's share of representative govern- 

 ment. 



The year 1880 was rendered memorable in Victorian politics by 

 a series of those disquieting and rapid changes which seemed to 

 threaten the usefulness and the stability of Parliamentary govern- 

 ment. It witnessed three changes of Ministry ; suffered the delays 

 and expenses of two general elections ; had two Speakers successively 

 presented to the Governor, as the chosen of the people's representa- 

 tives ; and the public beheld with indignant amazement that all 

 the turmoil, plus seven months of Parliamentary wrangling, left the 

 Assembly to adjourn at Christmas in the same attitude of effete 

 antagonism as had distinguished its opening proceedings in May. 

 Besultless in effect, though voluminous in talk, the chronicle of the 

 year demands a few paragraphs. 



When the curtain was rung down on the 18th of December, 

 1879, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy was seen for the last time in the 

 Speaker's chair. He had played a far more important part in 

 Victorian politics than appeared upon the surface, for he had an ex- 

 ceptional faculty of dominating others to ensure the accomplishment 

 of the ends he had in view. His final words about his retirement, 

 written twenty years afterwards, though somewhat airily acknow- 

 ledging the generous treatment he had met with in his Australian 

 career, are not without the usual touch of morbid complaint and 

 suspicion that invariably marked his personal utterances. Apart 

 from the generous monetary gifts of his fellow-countrymen on his 

 arrival, he was sufficiently early in Ministerial office to secure a life 

 pension of 1,000 per annum for two years' service ; he paid two 



