Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/358

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THE IRISH IN AUSTRALIA.

your own country according to the power within yourselves. May such be the lot of every portion of the British Empire. May we see the day when it can truly be said that no portion of the Empire is held within its bounds by any other tie but the tie of good-will and affection. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, in many of the dark and troubled periods through which we have passed in Ireland, our sufferings would have been far harder, were it not for the large and abundant gifts that were poured in upon us in our day of distress with generous hands by our kindred and sympathisers, and friends abroad. From Australia, from New Zealand, from Canada, and from the great free republic of America, have come to this country generous gifts, and largely have they come from our own people—from the sons and daughters of exiled Irishmen."

One of the chief characteristics of the Irish in Australia is felicitously indicated in the foregoing remarks by the Lord Mayor of Dublin—the remarkable manner in which they have succeeded in rendering full and satisfactory allegiance to the land of their adoption and all its local institutions, whilst never forgetting the filial loyalty they owed to the land of their fathers and all its cherished traditions. Whilst bravely doing their part in building up new states in faraway lands, founding fresh cities, taming the wild bush, and developing all the natural resources of the fifth division of the globe, they have at the same time religiously preserved a deep and abiding interest in all that pertained to the old land of their affections, in every national movement, in every patriotic undertaking, in every successive advance towards the goal of legislative freedom. If any proof of this assertion were wanting, it is abundantly sup})lied by the active and continuous interest that has been manifested by the Irish race throughout the colonies in the present national move-