on the land question. He had advocated a progressive land tax in a public lecture and thus incurred the wrath of the moneyed interests, which all that supported the school, and Pearson decided to resign. Political career The newly-founded National Reform and Protection League of the period felt that here might be a valuable recruit and pressed Pearson to stand for parliament. He was afraid that his health would not stand the strain but accepted nomination for the difficult seat of Boroondara and was narrowly defeated. In May 1877, the Graham Berry government commissioned him to inquire into the state of education in the colony and the means of improving it. The report for which he received a fee of £1000 was completed in 1878. It was a valuable document, especially as he was the first to advocate the establishing of high schools to make a ladder for able children from the primary schools to university. This found little favour at the time, and more than 30 years passed before that part of his scheme was fully developed. Another valuable part of the report dealt with technical education and foreshadowed the many technical schools since established in the state of Victoria. On 7 June 1878, Pearson was returned as one of the members for Castlemaine in the Victorian Legislative Assembly and thus began his political career. Almost immediately, he was plunged into the quarrel between the Assembly and the Legislative Council that had arisen over Premier Berry's appropriation bill. The government determined to try to obtain the consent of the home authorities to the limiting of the rights of the Council. In December 1878, Pearson was appointed a commissioner to proceed to London with the Berry bill. The mission was not successful, the feeling being in that it was the business of both houses to settle questions of this kind themselves. On 3 August 1880, Pearson became minister without salary or portfolio. On 4 July 1881, he declined the offer of Agent-General in London, and as he believed that the administration was doomed, and on 9 July, the cabinet resigned. Pearson was elected to the district of East Bourke Boroughs in 1883 and held it until April 1892. Pearson remained a private member until 18 February 1886 when he became minister of public instruction in the Gillies-Deakin coalition ministry, and in 1889 succeeded in passing an education act, which introduced