Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/155

 to the high-minded, warm-hearted, sympathetic lady, who, unaided by any force outside her own lofty enthusiasm and unexampled energy, had effected an abiding moral and social revolution.

A general address was signed by members of the Legislative Assembly, magistrates, landholders, merchants and representative citizens. It tendered to Mrs. Chisholm a warm expression of thanks for her zealous and active exertions on behalf of the emigrant population during her seven years' residence in the colony. It was universally acknowledged that the extraordinary efforts which she had made in the cause of practical philanthropy had been dictated by a spirit of the most enlightened benevolence. The address concluded by stating that signal advantages had been conferred on the community by her establishing an Emigrants' Home in Sydney, and procuring the satisfactory settlement of great numbers of the emigrant population in the interior.

Out of the many eulogiums that were pronounced on Mrs. Chisholm's seven years' work in Australia, one is especially worthy of note, as coming from a remarkably close and critical observer. Mr. Robert Lowe, now Lord Sherbrooke, was a young barrister, a prominent politician and a contemporary of Mrs. Chisholm's in Sydney many years ago, and this is his testimony: "One person only in the colony has done anything effectual—anything on a a scale which may be called large—to mitigate this crying evil and national sin, and to fix families on our lands in lieu of bachelors. And, strange to say, that one is an humble, unpretending, quiet-working female missionary—an emigrant missionary, not a clerical one. The singularity of her mission, looking to the nature of her work, is one of the