During my absence in Australia the bishopric of Clogher became vacant, and the votes of the parish priests declared my valued friend, the Maynooth Professor Dignissimus, for the office. But another priest unknown to me was, to my great disappointment, selected by the Holy See on the recommendation of Dr. Cullen. But the new bishop was not a partisan. He put himself at the head of a committee to invite me to a public dinner in my native town, and remained my steadfast friend from that time until his death. After the public dinner I visited the cemetery of the district. My mother was buried in a family tomb, erected in the last century, containing many of my ancestors and kinsmen, but the good bishop co-operated with me by granting a site on which I erected a Celtic cross to the special memory of my dear mother.
When I returned to London with more leisure, I found English opinion on Australian affairs strangely ill-informed. On one point I was peculiarly sensitive. Responsible Government was pronounced to have ignominiously failed in Australia. In the National Review, under the control of men so able and so fair as Mr. Bagehot and Mr. Hutton, the most contemptuous judgment was pronounced on us. The verdict seemed to me ill-informed and unfair, and I determined to join issue with them, not as a friend of the Government, but as a friend of the colony. I wanted various documents for this purpose, and I frankly sent for them to a political opponent who was in the best position to obtain them. Mr. Higinbotham immediately replied:—
"I have only time before the closing of the mail to acknowledge your note of August 20th. I will send by the earliest ship the papers you ask for—or as many as I can procure—including a Report just prepared, on the working of the New Land Act.
"Parliament will be prorogued on Tuesday, after a Session of a year's length, and will be immediately dissolved. The Government are still supported by a large majority of the Assembly, and we expect to be successful at the Elections, but the struggle will be severe, and if- money can turn the scale we shall be beaten. The last debate in the Assembly ended this morning at past one o'clock.
