THE BERRY INFLUENCE, 1875-1882 211 



lengthened visits to Europe, and was always readily returned to 

 Parliament on re-presenting himself. In addition to pension rights 

 he received altogether from the State as Minister, Speaker and 

 member of Parliament some 20,000, and was enabled to see out 

 the century in financial ease and intellectual occupation. On the 

 sunny shores of the Kiviera, he settled down to that literary labour 

 which it is believed he delighted in, and in which he was certainly 

 seen at his beat. " As the session approached its close," writes Sir 

 Charles, " I announced that I would not again occupy the chair or 

 be a member of Parliament. I took farewell of a House in which I 

 had served since its creation, to which I had given without stint 

 toil of mind and body, and which had bestowed on me all the 

 favours it could confer on a public man. I owed it much, and 

 I should probably have finished my life in the scene which had 

 occupied so large a section of it, but that I loathed the task of 

 answering again and again the insensate inventions of religious 

 bigotry. ... I determined that my public career would end here, 

 and that I should never more become member of any Legislature, or 

 ever again mount a political platform." 



The general election of February, 1880, was disastrous to the 

 Berry following. Their leader had suffered eclipse; many of his 

 nominal supporters were in revolt, and he was handicapped by the 

 ridicule which a large section of the press poured upon his mission 

 to England and his disingenuous accounts of its reception. The 

 majority was so decisively adverse that Mr. Berry did not wait 

 to meet Parliament, but resigned at once. Mr. James Service 

 succeeded him with a strong Cabinet, including G. B. Kerferd and 

 Dr. John Madden as his Law Officers, Duncan Gillies at the Bail- 

 ways, John Gavan Duffy as Minister of Lands, and two Ministers 

 in the Council, E. S. Anderson and Henry Cuthbert. On the 20th 

 of May Mr. Service introduced his Eeform Bill, which was debated 

 from the 1st to the 24th of June, when it was rejected on a division 

 by forty-three votes to forty-one. If this Bill could have secured 

 but three more supporters, there is every reason to believe that it 

 would have been accepted by the Council. For there was a growing 

 feeling in the Upper House that finality must be found somewhere, 

 and Mr. Service's proposals did not go much further than the 



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