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 The Conservatives’ manifesto stated that the confusion and commotion of the previous years had disturbed society and kept the colony from progressing as it ought to have progressed. New Zealand’s escape from the financial storms that swept Australia was attributed to the prudence of the old Continuous Ministry. It was urged that the country must send back to Parliament members pledged to prudent and economical legislation. The Liberals were accused of having absorbed the dangerous doctrines of Henry George, Edward Bellamy, and Hyndman. State Socialism, it was said, was the Government’s principle, and it was a bad thing and should be thrown out. The labour proposals, a large portion of which had not been placed on the Statute Book, were derided as a complete fiasco. The Government’s schemes were described as being crude and ill-considered; others were vexatious; the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Bill was a measure of coercion that could not be tolerated. The Shop Assistants Bill, which enforced a half-holiday every week throughout the colony, was to come into operation early in the New Year, and one leading Conservative affirmed that if it had come into operation before the election not a single man who voted for it would have been returned for Christchurch City.

Mr. Seddon relied mainly upon the material signs of the colony’s progress during the past few years, and upon the contrast the position afforded with that of three years previously, when the Continuous Ministry was in office. He pointed out that Sir Harry Atkinson had raised loan after loan, while the Government of which Mr. Seddon was the head was the first that had gone for three years without passing a Loan Act. He boasted of the advanced land legislation recently passed. The Government’s policy, he said, so far from driving capital away, had attracted it. His Government was the first to possess sufficient boldness to reduce the public debt out of the surplus. The time had come when both employees and capitalists would look back upon the labour legislation of those years and acknowledge that it was in their interests. Speaking to farmers, he pointed to the repeal of the property tax, the reduction of railway freights, and other concessions. At that time the