and badinage, and only partly awakened to the serious duties of life. But in time he grew prodigiously; he is the only Australian who has been granted a monument in St. Paul's for public services to the Empire, for it was this Irish Catholic Nationalist who, as acting Prime Minister, despatched the expedition to the Soudan, which has permanently increased the goodwill between the mother-country and her colonies.
During my stay in Sydney the first general election under the new constitution took place, and there was scarcely a constituency in which some candidate did not debate my visit and its possible consequences. John Macnamara, a merchant of wealth and intelligence, might be regarded as the leader of the Irish, and he besought me to stay in Sydney, and undertook that if I remained I should obtain professional business, to create an adequate income.[1] Parkes was more anxious for my political career, and as Parliamentary labours would necessarily engross much of my time, offered me £800 a year to write for the Empire whatever I found convenient. His good-will was undoubted, and was frequently tested during our public careers; but no doubt he was mainly moved by the consideration that I could be useful to the popular party. The enthusiasm of my countrymen in New South Wales was marvellous; I was bid to test it by the fact that two Gavan-Duffy hotels and a Gavan-Duffy omnibus had sprung up within the month, and that during the election the Irish voters had been everywhere placated by so many extravagant compliments to me. One man in every three in the colony was an Irishman, and if they joined the popular party under my counsel its future would be secure. But the Sydney Morning Herald, the prosperous organ of the Conservative Party, was then under the control of a remarkable man, the Rev. Mr. West, the historian of Tasmania. Nothing in my visit to
- ↑ In my diary of this date I find this entry:—"I was much struck by an observation of Mr. Macnamara that the history of Ireland can never be adequately written without examining the records of the convicts in Botany Bay establishment. He spoke with deep feeling of the cruelty with which the agrarian and political prisoners were treated. I wish I had time to look into this Irish episode. Muir, Palmer, and the Scottish reformers of 1793, and Joseph Holt and the Irish insurgents of 1798, and men sentenced for agrarian offences in Ireland or for seditious conspiracy in England often, he said, proved useful and estimable colonists."
