326 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



any material recovery had been made from the financial disasters, 

 Indeed, the whole period of his stay had been marked by anxiety 

 and depression, and he saw Victoria under a far less favourable 

 aspect than his immediate predecessor. After a considerable in- 

 terval, during which his office was filled by Sir John Madden, Lieut.- 

 Governor and Chief Justice, his successor, Lord Brassey, arrived on 

 the 25th of October, 1895. He came out from England in his famous 

 yacht, The Sunbeam, about which much interest had been aroused 

 by the first Lady Brassey's spirited account of its cruises. He had 

 an uneventful term of office, and was a witness of the gradual return 

 to a more prosperous condition of affairs, and to the virtual com- 

 pletion of the Federal compact, though he left before its final in- 

 auguration. He sailed away in The Sunbeam on the 13th of January, 

 1900, and once more Sir John Madden assumed the administration 

 for a lengthened period. The coming Federation was the absorbing 

 interest of the last year of the century. Under the glowing antici- 

 pations which it aroused, local politics ceased to stir much excitement. 

 Even the temporary defeat which Sir George Turner sustained at 

 the hands of Mr. McLean, who at the outset had been a member 

 of his Cabinet, was regarded almost with indifference, as a mere 

 shuffling of the political cards. 



The seventeenth Parliament ran its full term, and was dissolved 

 on the 18th of October, 1900. A general election followed, and the 

 new Assembly met on the 13th of November. On the following day 

 Sir George Turner carried an adverse vote upon the policy of the 

 McLean Ministry by fifty-one to forty-two. The close of the century 

 found him once more Premier and Treasurer, calmly awaiting his 

 call from the arena of State politics to be included in the first 

 Commonwealth Ministry, the selection of which was unconditionally 

 in the hands of the Governor-General. 



