Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/220

 CHAPTER V

IN OPPOSITION

remnant of the defeated Government took up their places on the front Opposition Bench, of which they only occupied a corner; with the few supporters who followed them they rarely mustered half a dozen members. Below the gangway the real Opposition were gathered, the Mining and Convention members and the men who adhered to me when I retired from the late Government, the whole amounting together to somewhat more than a score. The new Government slightly outnumbered both sections of the Opposition, and were rendered safe by the fact that these sections disliked each other more than they disliked the enemy in front. The party below the gangway was without a name, without a policy, and without a leader; in a debate one of them spoke of the members surrounding him as "the men in that corner," and the name of "the Corner" was fixed 202