Page:Oliver Spence.djvu/29

22

Our hero and heroine seemed to both become younger by their experience of the unalloyed happiness which followed their marriage. Their faces seemed softer and their eyes even kinder and gentler in expression. The honeymoon was, owing to Oliver Spence's position, necessarily a very short one, so that in a few weeks Oliver was again giving close personal attention to the State affairs of Australia. Mary was of great service to him by her advice and assistance. She particularly interested herself in the welfare of the weaker sex, and personally saw that the wish of the Dictator, that all women who desired employment, should, on receipt of their application be given suitable work, and paid the same wages as men should be effectively carried out, and the fact that all women in need of employment could at once go to the National Workshops, and, like the men, receive the employment for which their physical or mental organization best fitted them, did more in a few months to abolish the compulsory unchastity of prostitution than all the canting or prurient members of Social Purity societies, could, by their methods, have accomplished in some centuries. It also obviated the necessity of mercenary marriages, a most vile form of life-long prostitution, which the disciples of Social Purity, had quite ignored.

So invaluable did Mary's help in governing, become to Oliver, that towards the period when his term of office was to expire, Australia was in fact governed by Oliver and Mary conjointly. Nor did the people object to this dual Dictatorship; on the contrary, they valued and esteemed the benign influence and actions of the Dictator's beautiful wife, so that when the Dictatorship expired, the National Electoral Convention elected them both the Joint-Rulers of Australia. It was thought that the female half of Australian humanity had rights to conserve quite as much as the male half, and those rights could best be conserved by endowing Oliver's amiable wife, with administrative and legislative powers equal to his own.

The Joint-Rulers frequently had long conversations together about the affairs of State and the principles of government, which, had they, been reported, would not have been without interest to the reader. The following condensed abstract of one of these dialogues may serve to illustrate the principles of government upon which the new order of things was founded:—

"Although, my dear Oliver, we are the supreme rulers of Australia, I cannot conceal from you that I still have some lingering belief in Democracy or government by the people. We, as you know, are after all, the appointed of a minority."

"Government by the people might be right enough, my dear, when they have for some considerable time enjoyed the advantages