Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/164

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150
THE IRISH IN AUSTRALIA.

emigrant countrymen to be on their guard against the foul fiend of drunkenness. "Since the era when the standard of temperance was first raised in the green old Western Isle—the Isle of the Saints—at no period, and in no country, was the rigid fulfilment of all the duties connected with teetotalism of such importance as it has now become in the great continent of Australia and the adjacent colonies." He goes on to declare that "very many of the political, social and moral evils of Ireland owe their origin or continuance to the baneful vice of drunkenness," and he pathetically pleads with his fellow-countrymen who were coming out to the new southern land, to live in accordance with the principles of Father Mathew. The only reason, he says, that induced him to pen this well-timed address was the "hope of lending helping hand in the work of regeneration, and thereby laying the foundation of great, free, and united states in te Southern Hemisphere." Looking back at the past history of the colonies, he sees them possessing the incalculable advantages of a pure salubrious climate, a soil abounding in fertility, producing all the necessaries and even the luxuries of life, and covered with flocks and herds and gathered harvests. Then, lifting up the curtain of the future for the benefit of the emigrating Irish thousands, the man of '48 observes: "And in addition to all those blessings of heaven, there are now thrown open mines of the richest metal. Isolated though you stand, deeply embedded in the bosom of the boundless Pacific, you offer to the world an emporium of wealth. You have become a sort of magnet which will attract tens of thousands from the Northern Hemisphere—from the Old and New World to the Antipodes. The progress of the arts and sciences, civilisation, liberty, and independence ought to be the results of those unexampled sources