He is ordinarily fair and generous, but never so when Irish interests are concerned. Last Sunday, coming away from St. Kilda Church, I met him by the way and walked home with him. He talked frankly of many projects, especially of a design he was considering of turning the colony into one constituency for Parliamentary elections. He asked me what I thought of it, and I said I thought it highly objectionable. It would throw all the elections into the hands of wire-pullers in Melbourne, and new candidates would have no chance except by courting their favour, besides it would be most disastrous to minorities; I belonged to a minority which in some era of political frenzy might be left without a single representative. Oh, no, Higinbotham said, he felt sure the managers in Melbourne would always give them one representative to express their opinions. One representative! their just proportion being nineteen or twenty. And he said this with a placid and serene countenance as if it were the perfection of justice."
My friends in Dublin reported to me, as a piece of pleasant badinage, that one of Dr. Cullen's latest bishops, my old friend Dr. Moriarty, administered a little tonic to him in the funeral sermon of Dr. Blake, my lifelong friend. "The deceased prelate," said the preacher, "was a patriot in the truest sense of the word. I have mentioned his earnest co-operation with O'Connell in his struggles for the liberation of Ireland. But Dr. Blake was not one of those narrow-minded men who can sympathise only with those who think and act like themselves. He loved all who sincerely loved their native land, whether they were old or young; and if some loved her with more of ardour than of wisdom, he was not the man to join in the vulgar howl of those who denounced as infidels all who differed from them in politics. When a virtuous and highly gifted Irishman, whom his country knew too little, Charles Gavan Duffy, was leaving Ireland, Dr. Blake, old and infirm as he was, would go hence to Dublin to bid him a last farewell."
During Mr. McPherson's year of office a further amendment of the Land Law was effected, which gave practically free selection throughout the colony. Every squatter had originally obtained a pre-emptive right of a square mile for
