Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/346

 rage more completely "o'er leaped itself, and fallen on t'other side." The answer was too easy. I asked the House to recall the day on which I was withdrawn from the Conference by the attack on our railway system. It was on this day the propositions in question were carried, and I never saw them till after they had been adopted. Next day when I saw them, I accepted and signed them, and I considered them altogether unobjectionable; but was the House prepared, at the instance of the learned member, to affirm that the Chief Secretary of Victoria was primarily and peculiarly responsible for their adoption? On the other point he was as hopelessly mistaken. The document which I had refused to sign contained the allegation that certain unnamed English statesmen desired to dismember the British Empire. I asked Sir James Martin who were the statesmen we were invited to condemn so emphatically. He replied, Mr. Gladstone and others. As I did not believe the charge was true, I refused to adopt it. It was, in fact, a slander on Mr. Gladstone, with which I would be ashamed to be associated. Mr. Fellow's speech was seasoned with suggestions against my policy as an Irishman in Ireland, and my answer to this part of the case was fortunate enough to meet with peculiar success. After a detailed reply which is needless to reproduce, this was the concluding sentence:—

I had reached the hearts of my fellow-men, for tears overflowed the eyes of hardened politicians, and the House gave me a triumphant majority. The effect of the debate and division may be measured by the language held immediately after by a prominent member of the Opposition, Mr. Wilberforce Stephen, leader of the Equity Bar and Attorney-General in the next McCulloch Administration:--