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 rubbish about "the general community of Queensland abominating the very idea" of having as Governor an "ex-administrator of coercion in Ireland." At the same time it is perfectly true, and should have been patent to the mind of Lord Knutsford, that such an appointment would be sure to arouse the more unruly spirits, and that to send Sir Henry Blake at a time of such tension to Queensland, was to play straight into the hands of such persons, and to redouble the popularity of the local Minister in his new but not altogether consistent or high-minded line of policy. We must, however, take human nature and the exigencies of party political warfare as we find them.

Let us, in any case, not descend to the easy but uninstructive practice of mere abuse. Better it were to employ that high faculty which Professor Tyndall terms the "scientific imagination," and bring it to bear upon Sir Thomas M'Ilwraith, with the view of discovering the actual conditions of political leadership in the self-governing colonies at the present day.

I would point out that the earlier political leaders—those indeed who have made Australia politically what she is—were of quite another type to those