Now for its opponents.  Rallying under Sir George Grey in 1876, the beaten Provincialists formed a party of progress, taking the good old name of Liberal.  Though Sir George had failed to save their Provinces, his eloquent exhortations rapidly revived in the House of Representatives the democratic tendencies of some of the Councils.  Hitherto any concessions to Radicalism or Collectivism made by the House had been viewed in the most easy-going fashion.  Vogel in his earlier years had adopted the ballot, and had set up a State Life Insurance Department, which has been successfully managed, and has now about ten millions assured in it.  More interesting and valuable still was his establishment of the office of Public Trustee.  So well has the experiment worked, that it may be said as a plain truth that in New Zealand, the best possible Trustee, the one least subject to accidents of fortune, and most exempt from the errors which beset man’s honesty and judgment, has been found by experience to be the State.  The Public Trust Office of the Colony worked at first in a humble way, chiefly in taking charge of small intestate estates.  Experience, however, showed its advantages so clearly, that it has now property approaching two millions’ worth in its care.  Any owner of property, whether he be resident in the Colony or not, wishing to create a trust, may use the Public Trustee, subject, of course, to that officer’s consent.  Any one who desires so to do may appoint him the executor of his will.  Any one about to leave, or who has left the Colony, may make him his attorney.  The Public Trustee may step in and take charge, not only of intestate estates, but of an inheritance where no executor has been named under the will, or where those named will not act.  He manages and protects the property of lunatics.  Where private trust estates become the cause of disputes and quarrels, between trustees and beneficiaries, the parties thereto may relieve themselves by handing over their burden to the public office.  The Public Trustee never dies, never goes out of his mind, never leaves the Colony, never becomes disqualified, and never becomes that extremely disagreeable and unpleasant person—­a trustee whom you do not trust.  In addition to his other manifold duties he holds and administers very large areas of land reserved for the use of certain Maori tribes.  These he leases to working settlers, paying over the rents to the Maori beneficiaries.  Naturally, the class which has the most cause to be grateful to the Public Trust Office is that composed of widows and orphans and other unbusinesslike inheritors of small properties, persons whose little inheritances are so often mismanaged by private trustees or wasted in law costs.

Another reform carried out by Vogel had been the adoption of the Torrens system of land transfer.  Henceforth under the Land Transfer Law, Government officers did nearly all the conveyancing business of the Colony.  Land titles were investigated, registered, and guaranteed, and sales and mortgages then became as simple and almost as cheap as the transfer of a parcel of shares in a company.