Cirrus@Austlit

'The main purpose of "An Australian Labor Leader" is, of course, to interest the ordinary reader of fiction, who wants "a little love, a little laughter," with abundance of incident. In addition to that, however, the story shows how, in the playing of the political "game," all national interests are subordinated to the pushing of petty, personal, and class interests. Stone, the "Labor Leader" in an electorate semi-pastoral and semi-mining, and Groves, the vulgar champion of its big landholders, represent the worst which the party system gives us in Australia. Dalton, a young Australian, with the ideals which inspire the best of our rising literature, stands as a representation of the small but growing body of enthusiasts, of whom a few are to be found in every party, whose one aim is to make their country what it should be, "Earth’s Mightiest Isle."'

Source:

'Our Second Serial', The Critic, 21 September 1907, p.7.

Formed from a schism in the ranks of Labor newspaper The Clipper, which was being jointly operated by W.A. Woods and Gerald Massey. In 1905, Woods and Massey dissolved their partnership, and Massey established a rival newspaper, The Critic, under the editorship of Joseph Milner MacMaster.

'But "Our Pleasant Vices" is an Australian novel sui generis. It opens up to such of our imaginative writers as possess the necessary experience a new field for fiction–the life of the small country town, or township, where a peculiar class of society exists, where the old-established squatting families of the surrounding district form a sort of "county family" aristocracy. Mr. MacMaster agreeably presents to us the class of people with whom the country township resident is familiar – the lawyer, the doctor, the banker, the station manager, the sons and daughters of the squatter, the county editor, the broken-down gentleman, whose tendency to liquor has been his ruin, and the third-rate actor run to seed. We have the "township's" festivities – its amateur dramatics, dances, and races – presented to us, its little "sensations," and its police-court scandals. All this is pleasant enough in its way, especially when handled with the light, yet graphic, touch of one who both knows his subject and how to treat it. But the book has other merits to recommend it – a love story, of course, a heroine who is involved in a very unpleasant predicament, and is eventually extricated therefrom by the exertions of her lover; a villain of highly interesting and purely Australian type – perhaps the best character delineation in the work. Above all, there is a plot most ingeniously worked out, yet cleverly concealed, novel in design, yet not tragically heroic.'

Source:

'Our Pleasant Vices', Bacchus Marsh Express, 18 July 1891, p.4.