Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/200

 It was widely believed in Australia, and it has sometimes been insisted on in England, that the anti- Colonial sentiment was a craze of the Liberals. But unhappily it was a craze from which neither party escaped. In the "Life of Lord Malmesbury" a letter of Mr. Disraeli is published which exhibits that statesman under an awful fit of the disease:—

"The Fisheries affair is a bad business. Pakington's circular is not written with a thorough knowledge of the circumstances. He is out of his depth—more than three marine miles from shore. These wretched colonies will all be independent too in a few years, and are a millstone round our necks."

I did not sympathise with Mr. Bright's policy. Cutting off the colonies to lighten the progress of the empire seemed to me like cutting off the wings of a bird to disembarrass its flight. George III. shook off the millstone of the North American colonies with a result we are all familiar with, and if Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Bright had given effect to his conviction he would have done a work as disastrous.

William-K. Sullivan was at this time one of the most original and laborious chemists in Europe, and he was moreover an accomplished man of letters. He wrote to me proposing to come to the new colony and devote himself to the organisation of science and the devolopment [sic] of new industries. He held at the time, under Sir Robert Kane, the first appointment in the Museum of Irish Industry, and he was afterwards promoted by the Imperial Government to be President of the Queen's College in Cork. The same spirit that stimulated Berkeley to seek a career in India, and Arnold to meditate one in Ireland, moved the generous soul and eager spirit of Sullivan. He wrote to me frankly of his wishes:—

"Now that you are in power I think you could do many things which would benefit the colony in an educational point of view, and let me candidly add I would be very glad to assist you. My proposal is this Establish a Chair of Chemistry in the University of Melbourne, and establish in connection with it a technological collection or museum in which would be brought together specimens of all the raw laterals, mineral, vegetable, and animal, produced in the colony. Specimens illustrative of the processes and pro-