all.  In order that government should be honest, intelligent, and economical, it needs helpful criticism rather than unqualified opposition; and this criticism may be expected from the less compact and more independent ranks in a legislative body which truly represents all the people.  Party discipline, which is almost inevitable in the present struggle for ascendancy or defeat, is the most undemocratic agency in the world.  It is rather by liberating all votes and allowing them to group themselves according to conviction that a real government of the people by the people can be secured.  When I look back on the intention of the framers of the Commonwealth Constitution to create in the Senate a States’ rights House I am amazed at the remoteness of the intention from the achievement.  The Senate is as much a party House as is the House of Representatives.  Nothing, perhaps, describes the position better than the epigrammatic if somewhat triumphant statement of a Labour Senator some time ago.  “The Senate was supposed to be a place where the radical legislation of the Lower Chamber could be cooled off, but they had found that the saucer was hotter than the cup.”

The long illness and death of my ward, Mrs. Hood, once more gave to my life a new direction.  History was repeating itself.  Just as 40 years earlier Mrs. Hood and her brothers had been left in my charge on the death of their mother, so once again a dying mother begged me to accept the guardianship of her three orphan children.  Verging as they were on the threshold of manhood and womanhood, they scarcely needed the care and attention due to smaller children, but I realized I think to the full, what so many parents have realized—­that the responsibilities for the training of children of an older growth are greater and more burdensome than the physical care of the infant.  The family belongings were gathered in from the four quarters of the globe to which they had been scattered on my giving up housekeeping, and we again began a family life in Kent Town.  Soon after we had settled, the motion in charge of the Hon. D. M. Charleston in favour of the adoption of proportional representation for Federal elections was carried to a successful issue in the Legislative Council.  The Hon. A. A. Kirkpatrick suggested the advisableness of preparing a Bill at this stage.  A motion simply affirming a principle, he said, was not likely to carry the cause much further, as it left the question of the application of the principle too much an open one.  The league, he thought, should have something definite to put before candidates, so that a definite answer could be obtained from them.  In New Zealand, Mr. O’Regan, a well-known solicitor, had also introduced into the House of Representatives during 1898 a Bill for the adoption of effective voting.  Unfortunately members had become wedded to single electorates, and when a change was made it was to second ballots—­a system of voting which has for long been discredited on the Continent.