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MY LIFE IN TWO HEMISPHERES
early. After my election, he sent me a list of such questions which were mainly non-political and non-contentious, in a letter of general sympathy:—
"Dunster House, November 8, 1856."My Dear Mr. Duffy,—A good deal of talk, and a good deal of thought about you had nearly reached their climax in a note, when I found your card upon my table. I have to congratulate you upon your return, and upon the flattering circumstances by which it was accompanied. You were scarcely inclined to believe me when I told you that certain attacks, however irritating, did not reach very far in their effects. Do not the facts of your election rather tend to prove it? I have been thinking lately that the time is come for me to carry out my promise of supplying you with numerous suggestions for reforms. I think I promised you fifty. Sinnett has been staying with me for a few weeks, and we have been for some days cudgelling our brains for suggestions. And allow me to hint, my dear Mr. Duffy, that a country can scarcely be considered to be so very badly governed, in which two such ardent reformers as Sinnett and myself, who have been scribbing away for years on the subject, cannot scrape together at least the number I promised you. I send you, however, such as I have, and have no doubt that during the currency of the session I shall be able to make up the number. Some of them you will doubtless think wild and Utopian, I can only say that they are such as I would have a try at, were I in the House. I feel convinced that your present policy is one of practical utility. The colonists are inclined to give you a fair trial, combined with a slight shade of suspicion, and anything which may be construed into an over-eager grasping at office would be permanently injurious to you. This colony strikes me as being a singularly favourable field for the trying of enlightened experiments—in matters which a larger, older country cannot venture upon—but which, being found successful here, may be safely and with readiness adopted elsewhere. Do not you, then, imagine that because you are exiled from your favourite Ireland, you are therefore in no position to benefit Ireland. You may benefit her by proving to the British public that they may
