visit to the old country was a great deal too much.  If it could have done any good to proportional representation I might have stood out; but it could not.  For that I have since travelled thousands of miles by sea and by land; and, though not on foot, I have undergone much bodily fatigue and mental strain, but in these early days of the movement it had only entered the academic stage.  My “Plea for Pure Democracy” had been written at a white heat of enthusiasm.  I do not think I ever before or since reached a higher level.  I took this reform more boldly than Mr. Mill, who sought by giving extra votes for property and university degrees or learned professions to cheek the too great advance of democracy.  I was prepared to trust the people; and Mr. Hare was also confident that, if all the people were equitably represented in Parliament, the good would be stronger than the evil.  The wise would be more effectual than the foolish.  I do not think any one whom I met took the matter up so passionately as I did; and I had a feeling that in our new colonies the reform would meet with less obstruction than in old countries bound by precedent and prejudiced by vested interests.  Parliament was the preserve of the wealthy in the United Kingdom.  There was no property qualification for the candidate in South Australia, and we had manhood suffrage.

South Australia was the first community to give the secret ballot for political elections.  It had dispensed with Grand Juries.  It had not required a member of either House to stand a new election if he accepted Ministerial office.  Every elected man was eligible for office.  South Australia had been founded by doctrinaires, and occasionally a cheap sneer had been levelled at it on that account; but, to my mind, that was better than the haphazard way in which other colonies grew.  When I visited Sir Rowland Hill he was recognised as the great post office reformer.  To me he was also one of the founders of our province, and the first pioneer of quota representation.  When I met Matthew Davenport Hill I respected him because he tried to keep delinquent boys out of gaol, and promoted the establishment of reform schools; but I also was grateful to him for suggesting to his brother the park lands which surround Adelaide, and give us both beauty and health.  To Col.  Light, who laid out the city so well, we owe the many open spaces and squares; but he did not originate the idea of the park lands.  Much of the work of Mr. Davenport Hill and of his brother Frederick I took up later with their niece (Miss C. E. Clark), and their ideas have been probably more thoroughly carried out in South Australia than anywhere else; but in 1865 I was learning a great deal that bore fruit afterwards.