CHAPTER V
SPEAKER
My election for Gippsland, the "New Province"—Unanimously chosen as Speaker—The functions of a Speaker—Questions in Parliament—Payment of members—Opposed by the Council—Counter coup—Wholesale reduction of officers—My remonstrance—Letter from Mary Howitt—Personal leisure—K.C.M.G.—Literary criticism—Incidents—"Young Ireland" begun—Correspondence with Pope Hennessy—Lord O'Hagan and MacDermott of Coolavin—Futile appeal by the Colony to the Colonial Office—Re-appointment of Cashel Hoey—Loss of my wife—Death of Edward Butler and John Dillon—Rinuccini—Farewell to Australia—The main reason influencing me—Letter from Archbishop of Sydney—The two last decades of my life.
Immediately after my return to Melbourne the representation of Gippsland became vacant by the expulsion of a member who had misconducted himself. It was by a similar catastrophe that Dalhousie was vacated for my election ten years before, and the unwary reader will conclude that expulsions are a very common occurrence in that country; but the unwary reader will be mistaken, for during the five-and-twenty years I was connected with Australia there was not another such transaction, and there were at least as many expulsions from the House of Commons in the same period. Gippsland was by far the largest constituency in the colony, and from its size and importance was commonly called the New Province. When I was Chief Secretary I had proposed a railway, not so much to convenience a long neglected population as to connect the gold-fields, agricultural and squatting districts, lakes and forests of Gippsland with the metropolis, which I suggested would add a new province to Victoria. The name stuck, and when I returned from Europe was in universal use. The new province invited me to
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