THE EEA OF EXTRAVAGANCE 259 



ment Statist, being complicated by recoups and other mysteries of 

 official book-keeping, but they are those submitted by Mr. Gillies 

 in the Assembly, where they were invariably greeted with cheers. 



It might have been expected that these accumulating credit 

 balances would cause an outcry for remission of taxation in some 

 form. So far from that being the case, Mr. Gillies, after declaring 

 his surplus of 500,000 in 1887, intimated that he proposed to 

 raise an additional 50,000 by increasing the duties on sugar and 

 timber. He said he had been persistently urged to help the 

 woollen industry by increasing the protection of 25 per cent, which 

 it then enjoyed, under which inadequate tariff he was assured the 

 woollen mills were doomed to failure. He felt that he could not do 

 this without a comprehensive revision of the whole tariff, which 

 must be deferred until the next session. The representations of 

 the timber trades had, however, been too much for him, and sub- 

 stantial duties were placed upon all forms of that necessary raw 

 material which the hand of man had dressed. Doubling the duty 

 on beet-sugar was gaily indicated by Mr. Gillies as in some sense a 

 reprisal on the bonuses given by continental Governments, and an 

 attempt to help the weaker side in the unequal fight between 

 nations and individuals. It is true there was no sugar produced in 

 Victoria, but the Premier, in a burst of generosity, alleged that 

 the plantations in Queensland and Fiji were mainly financed by 

 Victorian capitalists, whose enterprise deserved encouragement. 

 Probably this is the only case in Victorian annals where Protection 

 was decreed which had no bearing on local employment or wages, 

 and yet undoubtedly enhanced the cost of one of the prime neces- 

 saries of the working man. 



With the swelling revenue of those years came the ambition to 

 live up to it, so the expenditure followed close upon its heels. It 

 had been extravagant prior to 1886, and Mr. Service had lifted up 

 his voice more than once against the growing incubus of the Civil 

 Service. As far back as 1881, when leaving for England, he said : 

 " There are upwards of 5,000 persons ministering to Government, 

 and there are not more than 200,000 adult males, of the ages 

 during which a man is capable of work, so that every forty of them 

 are called upon to maintain one tax eater ". The Coalition Govera- 



17* 



