w anyhow. In Adelaide the
belt of park lands kept the city apart from all suburbs. Andrew Murray
was as keen for the development of Victoria agriculturally and
industrially as Mr. Wilson, and they worked together heartily. Owing to
the state of my sister's health I was much occupied with her and her
children; but in August she was well, and I returned with Mr. Taylor
and his sister in the steamer Bosphorus, when it touched at Melbourne
on the way home. He brought me 30 pounds for my book, and the assurance
that it would be out soon, and that I should have six copies to give to
my friends. Novel writing had not been to me a lucrative occupation. I
had given up teaching altogether at the age of 25, and I felt that,
though Australia was to be a great country, there was no market for
literary work, and the handicap of distance from the reading world was
great.

My younger sister married in 1855 William J. Wren, then an articled
clerk in Bartley & Bakewell's office, and afterwards a partner with the
present Sir James Boucaut. Mr. Wren's health was indifferent, and
caused us much anxiety. My brother John married Jessie Cumming in 1858,
and they were spared together for many years. As the Wrens went on a
long voyage to Hongkong and back for the sake of my brother-in-law's
health, my mother and I had the charge of their little boy. But in that
year, 1859, my mind received its strongest political inspiration, and
the reform of the electoral system became the foremost object of my
life. John Stuart Mill's advocacy of Thomas Hare's system of
proportional representation brought back to my mind Rowland Hill's
clause in the Adelaide Municipal Bill with wider and larger issues. It
also showed me how democratic government could be made real, and safe,
and progressive. I confess that at first I was struck chiefly by its
conservative side, and I saw that its application would prevent the
political association, which corresponded roughly with the modern
Labour Party, from returning five out of six members of the Assembly
for the City of Adelaide. But for blunders on ballot papers the whole
ticket of six would have been elected. They also elected the three
members for Burra, and Clare. I had then no footing on the Adelaide
press, but I was Adelaide correspondent for The Melbourne Argus--that
is to say, my brother was the correspondent, but I wrote the
letters--he furnished the news. I read Mill's article one Monday night,
and wrote what w