The Remittance Man by Ambrose Pratt — Read

Jan's romantic history opened to his path the doors of many great houses in Sydney, which remained for all time welcomingly ajar for him when their owners discovered that, although a labor member and a late inmate of Darlinghurst Gaol, he was also a well-bred and handsome gentleman. In Parliament his peculiar gift of earnestness was speedily recognised, and although no great orator, he was looked upon within a year by both press and people as one of the most influential members in the House. Attached to no party, and wedded to no policy, except the honest furtherance of the public interest, his forceful pronouncements on heated questions of the day created discussions themselves. The Government then in power worked upon a majority so narrow that it retained office merely at the nod of the Labor Party, a body of some 18 gentlemen who were pledged to vote in caucus on all occasions, whatever the convictions of their own minority might be. Their solidarity gave them incalculable power. With a venal Government anxious above all things to retain office, and the opposition just as venally hungry for the advantages of office, this could hardly fail to be the case.

In fact, the Labor Party had only to express their wishes in order to have them hastily satisfied. Jan's sympathies were entirely with labor, and he heartily approved of most of the legislation which the Labor members introduced. But he regarded their caucus pledged vote as an immoral instrument of power, and his final refusal to join their ranks was couched in a letter that was published in a fit of pique by those to whom it was addressed, and which to their surprise, and his own, made him famous. "I cannot consent," wrote Jan, "to incorporate myself with a society which has the power to impose upon any minority, however small, of its adherents the duty of subordinating private principle to party purposes. In my opinion, the man who votes against his conscience votes against his country!"