66 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



west of Victoria, distinguished itself by returning a man who was 

 responsible for much political turmoil during the twenty-two years 

 he occupied a seat in Parliament. He filled in turn various Minis- 

 terial offices, up to that of Premier, until he at length secured the 

 lucrative dignity of Speaker, and subsequently enjoyed his leisured 

 retirement as a life-long pensioner of the Crown, which for a whole 

 generation he had denounced as the emblem of oppression and 

 tyranny. 



This was Mr. Charles Gavan Duffy, an ex-member of the House 

 of Commons, in virtue of which experience he early assumed the r61e 

 of Master of the Ceremonies in the conduct of the business of local 

 legislation. His coming had been heralded by much ingenious 

 advertising, in the form of inspired newspaper paragraphs, detailing 

 his latest movements in Great Britain. Every Irishman in the 

 colony was led to look forward to the advent of this prominent 

 champion the glamour of whose patriotism was somewhat tarnished 

 in the eyes of his home associates as the harbinger of an era of 

 Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, which the unthinking and the 

 emotional are ever clamouring for, without realising how the pages 

 of history are full of the records of its failure to supplant the instincts 

 of human nature. 



It is amusing to read in Mr. Duffy's autobiography 1 of the 

 many people he consulted about Australia before deciding to emi- 

 grate. Mr. Latrobe, Robert Lowe, William and Mary Howitt, 

 and others who had lived under Australian skies, commended the 

 step, and were unanimous in their praise of the climate and the 

 unconventional freedom of colonial life. But apparently the man 

 whose opinion had most weight was Edward Whitty, a well-known 

 writer, about that time acting as the London correspondent of the 

 Melbourne Argus. He claimed to know " nearly everything about 

 Australia," and he wrote to his friend with prophetic fervour, 

 " your progress would be historical ; you would lead the colony ; 

 you would create a better Ireland there ; you would become rich ". 

 The vision was largely realised. The opportunity was afforded 

 him, as Premier, of leading the colony. If he did not make 



* My Life in Two Hemispheres, By Charles Gavan Duffy, London, 1898. 



