Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/343



it was like "the fresh air descending from the mountains." The sub-editor, Mr. Poole, was frantic; said he never read such a speech; beseeched me to go and see the editor and warm him up. Would not let me out until I did it. Syme says you cannot be beaten, and if you were that no man can retreat from your speech now, it will be a standpoint. He prays that "you may keep the Pope and Irish out of your road!" Wherever I went the verdict was all the same way. No need now in being in a hurry about the "Commission to consider and report on the best means for planting and conserving State forests, and for inquiry and reporting as to the planting of foreign trees, suitable to the climate and for industrial uses."

The reception of the new Government by the Press was fair and even generous. The principal journals on the goldfields which had accepted, and perhaps supported, the McCulloch Government, admitted that the late Administration had been lethargic and barren, and they were prepared to welcome successors who cut out work on a liberal scale and set themselves promptly to perform it.

It was a great encouragement to me that in several of the other colonies the policy I proclaimed was pronounced suitable for the whole Australian continent.

These designs needed, above all things, tranquillity to gather details, to ponder upon means and methods, and to consult the experience of other countries, but during the twelve months I was Prime Minister, however just and necessary the policy I proposed, I was never allowed one day's leisure. The wealthy class, to whom Free Selection meant extinction, the party who had held power so long that they deemed themselves robbed of their inheritance if any other one intruded into that domain, and the free lances fighting only for personal ends, were agreed upon one point—to misrepresent and disparage whatever we undertook. "If a man," says Dickens, "would commit an inexpiable offence against any society, large or small, let him be successful. They will forgive him every crime but that." But there was compensation in the sympathy and applause of the industrious classes, which burst out spontaneously and universally. The crowded events of this period must be dealt with briefly on pain of omitting some of them altogether. The colony lived fast, and laboured successfully in that time. I will specify some of our labours.