after consultation with some of my colleagues I found the generous offer could not be accepted because Sullivan was a Catholic, and his appointment would have been the subject of endless misrepresentation.
In New South Wales a general election had brought into Parliament some young men of my own race, in whose career I had large hopes. The most conspicuous of them were W. B. Dalley and Daniel Deniehy. Dalley was a politician and a man of society, and Deniehy, though by profession an attorney, was a recluse and an accomplished man of letters. He was ill and absent during my visit to Sydney, but I had read some of his speeches and essays with much sympathy. I take an extract from his acknowledgment of my congratulations to indicate the sort of Irish-Australians I aimed to confederate in the new country in pious memory of the old one.
"Perhaps you will pardon my delay in answering your kind letter of congratulations when I assure you that the sovereign circumstance of pride and pleasure connecting itself with my return to the local Parliament is the receipt of that letter, the generous and graceful things it contained for a man so young and so obscure as myself, from one I have long learnt to love and honour more than any words at my command can express. But I have also to excuse my delay in acknowledging a letter, which, I trust, my children will yet show (when you and I are 'quiet in our graves' as what one of the greatest and truest men Ireland has had in these latter days was pleased to say to their father when putting his foot on the threshold of public life)—because of a species of nervous illness which has haunted me for the last three weeks, making me dread the very sight of pen, ink, and paper, and throwing even my business communications with home into disorder.
"I think the cardinal service—the permanent, the historical and statesmanlike benefit you can render Australia will be the federation of the provinces. Social as well as political reasons call for this urgently; and I know no one as fitted as yourself to execute this great work. How can I express to you with what pleasure, what readiness, what a sense of performance of the highest duty, I shall co-operate—humbly and within my own little sphere?
