Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/281

 attend personally at the Registry Office, and personal attendance meant the waste of a day's wages, and perhaps the loss of a nugget; but suppose he were right in his facts, I could not see how it helped his argument that the democracy ought to be refused the franchise in England. If I might call in question the logic of so accomplished a dialectician, it appeared to me a very inconsequential argument to contend that, because the working classes in Australia were indifferent to the franchise, it was dangerous to grant it to them in England, lest they might swamp all the other classes by their eager exercise of it. It was the subject of much humorous banter at the time that the Times sided with the returned colonist against its own favourite contributor. "Mr. Gavan Duffy," it said, "had more reason on his side than we like to admit in his retort to Mr. Lowe's strictures on the Australian Parliaments." Next morning Mr. Edward Wilson wrote:—

John Forster wrote:—

", Let me tell you with what pleasure and cordial agreement I read what you are reported to have said at the dinner on Saturday.

"You have, I hope, forgiven me all my levities in our late Sunday night's talk, for which I am ready to confess and do penance, in any mode you may prescribe."

The speech seemed to have satisfied some of my Tory friends as well as the Liberals. Sir Emerson Tennent wrote me:—