604 PARLIAMENTS OF THE DOMINIONS [paRTIiL 
dispatches, ministers resigned and the Governor tried to fill 
their places ; when the time came to meet Parliament the 
difficulties of the position were obvious. Ministers who 
were merely holding office pending the appointment of their 
successors could hardly prepare a speech. Accordingly for 
two months, whenever the House met, there was merely 
a motion for adjournment, Mr. Higinbotham acting as leader 
in the House in the illness of Mr. McCulloch. At length, 
on May 6, a Ministry was formed under Mr. Sladen, who 
accepted office only in order that Her Majesty’s Government 
might be carried on, but two of the seven ministers were 
defeated on trying to obtain re-election. Mr. Fellows served 
in May as Minister of Justice and leader in the Assembly. 
During June Mr. Fellows offered to introduce the Darling 
grant as a separate Bill, and it appears that the Upper House 
would have accepted it in that form, when the news came 
that Sir Charles Darling had re-entered the public service. 
It seemed that Sir Charles Darling had not understood that 
it was open to him to remain in that service, and though 
he did not receive a further appointment a pension of 
£1,000, dated from October 24, 1866, was given. He died 
in January 1870 at Cheltenham, and immediately on the 
news of his death being received both Houses passed a Bill 
conferring a pension of £1,000 a year on Lady Darling, to- 
gether with a sum of £5,000 for the education of her children. 
Mr. Higinbotham was deeply disappointed at the result, 
for his heart was in the defeat of the Upper Chamber, which 
he was not destined to see accomplished in his lifetime. 
His indignation vented itself in his famous speech in 18692 
protesting against Imperial interference in the affairs of the 
Colony, and in the resolution against that interference which 
he carried in that year. But he was unable to secure any sub- 
stantial renewal of the attack on the Upper House, and ulti- 
mately he abandoned politics for the judicial bench, to emerge 
nearly twenty years later in disputes with the Colonial Office. 
In 1877 the dispute between the two Houses of Victoria 
' Parl, Pap., June 1868, pp. 8 seq. 
* See Morris, Memoirs of George Higinbotham, pp. 160-89.