Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/134

 and therefore I need not apologise for any trouble I give you in it."

I rejoice to think that I did my devoirs to the satisfaction of my friends. The Professors were cited before the Committee and their interests were effectually served. Another institution in which I took a strong interest was less fortunate. Dr. Newman was at the head of the Catholic University, and was perhaps among living men the one fittest for that position. Dr. Cullen was entitled to exercise a certain control over the University, and thwarted more than one of the Superior's designs. At length he produced a catastrophe. A salary had been assigned to Rev. Mr. Ford, a young man who was perhaps useful to the Archbishop, but did no service whatever to the University. Dr. Newman declined to certify for a salary which did not represent any service. The Archbishop sent him peremptory instructions to certify, which he did accordingly, but immediately sent in his resignation. By this unhappy incident the man who had most profoundly influenced the Church of England while he was one of its ministers was separated from the Irish Church, where his influence would probably have been as large and as beneficent.

My design in going to Australia was to practise at the Bar and to hold aloof from politics, but my friends insisted on anticipating for me a political career in the new world. Lucas wrote me, "John Bright, who has been to see me, says that Lowe predicts you will be member for Sydney before six months," and Isaac Butt wrote "that you may win in the land of your adoption all that the strange fate that attends Irishmen of genius has kept from you at home is now all that your friends can wish for you." They forecast the future more successfully than I did.

I left in the hands of my friends an application for the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, the acceptance of an office of profit being the only method by which a seat in the House of Commons can be relinquished, the profit in this case counting by shillings, and the shillings being never paid in any instance I have heard of.

John Dillon told my steadfast friend Alderman Plunkett that I had applied for an office under the British Crown in