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 do extreme things in office, but all my actions were so falsely coloured by the deluders of your 'race' that I could hardly recognise one of them in the form in which they discussed them. But enough of this for the moment.

"I unreservedly think with you on the temper of the times and the portentous difficulties that are rising up in the way of real progress and solid prosperity. I fervently pray to God that a way may be found out for your 'race to mix with mine as fellow-citizens, apart from that power which hitherto in every political crisis has guided them in one direction, right or wrong. Like you, 'I prefer men of brains not only as allies, but as opponents,' whether English or Irish, Protestant or Catholic. But these brains will be useless if they do not guide rightly the hearts that are under their influence."

During my absence from Victoria, the Protectionist Party were so undeniably in the ascendant that it was plain their opinions must long prevail. I thought that to plant new industries, for which the raw materials existed in abundance in the colony, by State aid of some sort was justifiable. But beyond this there was the problem whether a man who desired to settle the Land Question, and the Education Question, was altogether to abandon public life, if public opinion went decisively against him on one point, like Protection. I consulted three men in whose judgment I had great confidence: Thomas Carlyle, John Bright, and Stuart Mill. Carlyle made no bones of the matter; he said no country had ever got manufactures established without State assistance, and that it was prodigious nonsense to treat such a practice as an offence.

This was Stuart Mill's reply:—

"I feel it a very high compliment that you should wish to know my opinion on a point of conscience, and still more so that you should think that opinion likely to be of any assistance to you in the guidance of your own political conduct.

"The point mentioned in your letter is one which I have often and carefully considered, for though my own course in public matters has been one which did not often call on me to co-operate with anybody, I have reflected much on the conditions of co-operation, among the other requisites of