THE TRANSITION TO RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT 67 



Australia a better Ireland, which sounds rather equivocal, he 

 certainly made it a better place for a great many Irishmen who 

 swarmed into the Civil Service under his patronage. And he 

 became rich, by the generous contributions of his admirers, the 

 handsome payments for his political services, and the easy oppor- 

 tunities offered in all new countries of securing a share in the 

 unearned increment in the value of property. 



If Mr. Duffy's modesty was shocked by this extreme tribute 

 to his merits, he must have recovered his equanimity when he 

 experienced the reception accorded to him when the Ocean Chief 

 dropped anchor in Hobson's Bay in January, 1856. The Irish 

 colonists were greatly agitated by the prospect of securing the 

 services of so noteworthy a leader. Mr. O'Shanassy led a large 

 deputation on board to offer him words of praise and welcome. 

 From all quarters addresses of adulatory congratulation poured in 

 upon him. One from Sydney, headed by Mr. Henry Parkes, urged 

 him not to commit his future to Melbourne, but to make the 

 mother-colony the scene of his coming triumphs. A public banquet 

 followed close upon his landing at which the wildest enthusiasm 

 was displayed, intensified by his long-remembered declaration that 

 he had no apology to offer for any act of his past life, and that he 

 was still " an Irish rebel to the backbone and spinal marrow ". 



But he assured his new admirers that he was weary of political 

 life, and desired to devote himself to the practice of his profession at 

 the Bar. In any case he was not prepared to reconsider this deci- 

 sion until he had learned something practically of his new environ- 

 ment. It is not surprising that the hero-worship of which Mr. 

 Duffy was made so prominent a centre led him to suppose that the 

 colony was destitute of men of political ability, or even of patriotism. 

 Many who freely admitted his intellectual qualities and high literary 

 reputation were repulsed by the assumption in some of his speeches 

 that his brief experience in the House of Commons gave him the 

 right to be only sarcastically tolerant of the amateur legislators who 

 had never seen a real Parliament. A few days after his arrival, 

 when he was introduced as a visitor to the Legislative Council by Mr. 

 O'Shanassy, he took exception to a Bill regulating the admission of 

 barristers to the Supreme Court, which Mr. Fellows was then sul^ 



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