In 1885 and 1886 the industrial outlook was perhaps at its worst.  In 1887, Atkinson and Whitaker, coming again into power, with Hall as adviser, administered a second dose of taxation-cum-retrenchment.  They cut down the salaries of the Governor and the ministers, and the size and pay of the elected chamber.  They made efforts, more equitable this time, to reduce the cost of the public departments.  They stiffened the property-tax, and for the second time raised the Customs Duties, giving them a distinctly Protectionist complexion.  The broad result was the achievement of financial equilibrium.  For ten years there have been no deficits in New Zealand.  Apart from retrenchment, Atkinson had to rely upon the Opposition in forcing his financial measures through against the Free Traders amongst his own following.  This strained his party.  Moreover, in forming his cabinet in 1887 he had not picked some of his colleagues well.  In particular, the absence of Mr. Rolleston’s experience and knowledge from the House and the government weakened him.  Mr. Rolleston has his limitations, and his friends did the enemy a service when, after his return to public life in 1891, they tried to make a guerilla chief out of a scrupulous administrator.  But he was a capable and not illiberal minister of lands, and his value at that post to his party may be gauged by what they suffered when they had to do without him.  The lands administration of the Atkinson cabinet became unpopular, and the discontent therewith found a forcible exponent in an Otago farmer, Mr. John McKenzie, a gigantic Gael, in grim earnest in the cause of close settlement, and whose plain-spoken exposures of monopoly and “dummyism” not only woke up the Radicals, but went home to the smaller settlers far and wide.  It may be that these things hastened the breaking-down of Sir Harry Atkinson’s health in 1890.  At any rate fail it did, unhappily.  His colleague, Sir Frederick Whitaker, was ageing palpably.  Nor did Sir John Hall’s health allow him to take office.

[Illustration:  THE HON.  JOHN MACKENZIE

By permission of Messrs. SAMPSON LOW]

With their tres Magi thus disabled, the Conservative party began to lose ground.  More than one cause, no doubt, explains how it was that up to 1891 the Liberals hardly ever had a command of Parliament equal to their hold upon the country.  But the abilities of the three men just named had, I believe, a great share in holding them in check.  Sir John Hall’s devotion to work, grasp of detail, and shrewd judgment were proverbial.  He was the most businesslike critic of a bill in committee the House of Representatives ever had, and was all the more effective in politics for his studiously conciliatory manner.  Astute and wary, Sir Frederick Whitaker was oftener felt than seen.  But with more directness than Whitaker, and more fighting force than Hall, it was Atkinson who, from 1875 to his physical collapse in 1890, was