Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/203

 "I know not if I ought to congratulate you on your accession to ministerial honour and responsibilities. I should have liked to see you some years longer independent in the House, a learner and observer among men and facts purely Australian, and then Premier of Victoria. Would to God, my dear Mr. Duffy, we had you here! I think the man who undertakes to tell the world the story of your life will overlook one of your highest services to your country if he omits to tell how, by ineffably fine sympathies and continuous guiding and teaching for holy ends, you moulded into noble and vigorous forms the intellect and spirit of the young men of Ireland. I have been told by the few who really knew anything of you while you sojourned in Sydney—that you looked largely to the young native men of Australia to shape wisely and beneficially their country's destinies, even at this almost rudimentary stage of our national existence. O, dearest Mr. Duffy, the service you rendered young Irishmen is what you also, and you alone, could afford my countrymen here. In Victoria, I believe, you have as yet no native youth—and one great element of beneficence is removed from your pathway there. May we not hope sometime—ere long I hope—to have you in Sydney with us? Taking up politics as a solemn duty under the circumstances of oligarchic obstruction peculiar to this older province of Australia, but with tastes and feelings gravitating towards literature and art rather than politics—small politics too, with the coarse squabbles and the vile and vermicular intrigues perpetually dribbling through them—how I should be heartened and directed—how perpetually should I be refreshed with thoughts of the great coming benefits for the suffering section of humanity yet to fly hither—if I had Mr. Duffy as my leader!"

Henry Parkes, with whom local politics had not gone satisfactorily, informed me that he was about to retire from Parliament, and probably from New South Wales. I was eager to serve a man whom I greatly esteemed, and willing to fortify the popular party in Melbourne by so effective a recruit. My colleagues were willing also, and I made him an offer, which afforded him an immediate opening into public life in Victoria. It is disastrous to such arrangements to have them prematurely disclosed, and I was much chagrined at