important changes, but did not proceed far in the direction of technical education. However,it introduced the kindergarten system and 200 scholarships of £10 to £40 a year to help clever boys and girls to proceed from the primary schools to the grammar schools. He was able to implement one of the recommendations of his 1878 report, the building of a teachers college near the university. In November 1890 the Gillies-Deakin government resigned, and Pearson again became a private member. He took some interest in federation but, realizing its difficulties, adopted a cautious attitude. Retirement from politics Pearson retired from parliament in April 1892, declining to stand for election again, and began to work seriously on his book, National Life and Character: a Forecast. His indifferent health may have been one of the reasons preventing him from being offered the agent-generalship. Like everyone else, he had suffered heavy losses from the land boom and its aftereffects, and in August 1892 he left for England and accepted the secretaryship to the agent-general for Victoria. He worked hard and successfully, but though he did not complain, it must have been a great shock to him when he received a cablegram to say he was to be compulsorily retired in June. He caught a chill in February, which settled on his lungs, and died in May 1894, leaving a widow and three daughters. Mrs Pearson was given a civil list pension of £100 a year in 1895. He is buried on the east side of the western path in Brompton Cemetery in London, midway between the north entrance and the central buildings. National Life and Character: a Forecast Pearson's book, National Life and Character: a Forecast, had been published at the beginning of 1893, and created an international sensation. Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Pearson to praise the book; Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone recommended it highly, and the late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing read it in January 1896. Pearson's book caused a shock because it challenged the conventional wisdom about Western expansion, progress and triumph. Pearson argued that the "Black and Yellow" races were in the ascendant, as they were powered by population increase and, in the case of the Chinese, industrial capacity. He argued the so-called higher races, under the impact of declining birth rates and state socialism, had become "stationary." Colonized and otherwise subordinated peoples would soon escape relations of