proceeding as gravely injurious to the public interest. As I did not get satisfactory assurance on the point I took occasion, on the next day the House went into Committee of Supply (the only occasion on which a Speaker can with propriety take part in a debate), to call attention to the stroke which was meditated. Mr. Barker, I said, was one of the very best officers in the public service, was, in fact, the pivot on which the business of the House turned, and his colleague a serviceable and trustworthy officer whom we could not well spare. Mr. Barker was a squatter, and a fierce partisan of the squatting interest, but he was besides a patient, reliable, and careful officer, in whose hands the accurate records of Parliament were safe. The Government relinquished the design of displacing these gentlemen. Later I urged, with some success, that a few of the proposed victims might be spared. I have forgotten most of the transactions by this time, as I make no doubt the persons served have also done, but a note of a little later date reminds me of a service I was able to accomplish in the interests of a woman of genius to whom the reader may remember I was under obligations twenty years before, the dear, genial author of "Tibbie Inglis."
Dutenheim, Burneck, Tyrol, June 5, 1878.Dear Sir Charles Duffy,—Writing to our son with our warm congratulations on his restoration to work and public usefulness, I cannot but acknowledge, with heartfelt gratitude, the kind part which you have taken in this happy change for him and for us all, for we have deeply felt with him the pain and unnaturalness of his enforced idleness. Now, however, thank God, it is over.
It is curious, but many a time I have thought that surely you would be his friend at a time like this, remembering as I did the kind, sympathetic nature which I seemed to recognise in you. The poetry of the Nation had made me pleasantly acquainted with one part of your character, and now these little green volumes will be additionally valuable to me.
Should you some' winter visit Rome, as so many of your countrymen from old Ireland, as well as from the new land of your heritage do, it will give us great pleasure once more to shake hands with you.
Receive the kindest regards of my husband and myself, and believe me, dear Sir Charles Duffy, yours sincerely and gratefully,
Still the Council would not give way, and as a solution of the difficulty the Attorney- General advised that a deputation should be sent to London, to urge the Imperial Government to limit the obstructive power of the Legislative Council by an alteration in the Constitution. At a private meeting of
