Arthur Patchett Martin

“ We Victorians would at any time have hailed the brilliant Irish Chief Secretary, especially with an official "lodge" at Melbourne, as an ideal Secretary of State for the Colonies. Mr. Balfour is in fact the kind of man for whom, at least a few years ago, we used to cry out in our troubles; a statesman of initiative, possessing courage, intellect, and culture, and not a mere Downing Street drone. ”

“ To a thoughtful reader, indeed, the most suggestive point in the whole of his Magazine article is his somewhat ambiguous confession that these Anglo-Irish colonists have been the dominant political factor in the making, if not of Australia, at least of Victoria. Whenever it serves the purpose of his argument, Sir C. Gavan Duffy is not slow to emphasise the racial distinction between what he calls the two "sections" of Irish settlers; but he more often ignores or strives to obliterate it. ”

“ In the political building-up of Australia, these Anglo-Irish have indeed been like a small but powerful body of patricians, who from the first made their influence felt over the general mass of English, Scotch, and Celtic-Irish plebs. With regard to the purely English colonists and their descendants, who were always in a great majority, it is not denied that there was a sprinkling of men of good birth and high character who were from the first among the ruling caste of Australia. ”

“ The "constitutional history of Victoria," says Sir C. Gavan Duffy truly enough, "cannot be written in a paragraph." "When it comes to be written," he proceeds, "it will be seen how large and effectual a factor were the Irish of both sections. It would be absurd to suggest that they were fitter than Englishmen to administer a system honourably known to the world as 'English liberty,' but they were more eager to show that they were fit, and readier to make the sacrifice which a public career involved in a gold colony, where 'be in a hurry to grow rich' was the accepted gospel." ”

“ Hogan's book is an eloquent extract from a lecture by Mr. James Smith, a well-known Melbourne journalist, eulogising the filial piety of the Irish domestic servants, both in America and Australia. Speaking from his own experience, Mr. Smith gives an instance of three sisters, "unsophisticated but warm-hearted Irish girls, domestic servants in this city, who regularly remit one-third of their earnings every year to Ireland in order to support an aged and widowed mother in comfort and independence." No one will deny that such "acts of filial piety" are in the highest degree praiseworthy. ”

“ Britain, and her self-governing dependencies, as well as the great nation across the Atlantic, sprung from her loins, all prayerfully desire that they may be able to keep the path of freedom and toleration. But we must bear in mind that it is an experiment, and not an assured triumph, until it is proved that by this means, a hostile race, clinging to an alien creed, may be raised and assimilated. ”

“ I must at the outset call the reader's special attention to an article entitled "An Australian Example," which appeared in the Contemporary Review of January 1888, from the pen of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, formerly a leader of the "Young Ireland" party, but more recently a politician, and now a pensioner, of the Colony of Victoria; and to a recently published book. The Irish in Australia, by Mr. J. F. Hogan, an Irish- Australian journalist.
I must confess that the effect of this strong dose of Celtic literature on the uninstructed British mind must be truly appalling. ”

“ English race. No Australian needs the bulky book of Mr. Hogan, or the magazine essay of Sir C. Gavan Duffy, to assure him that the Irish Celt is a powerful factor for good or evil in our colonial affairs. It is as true as any such general statement can be that every Irishman is a politician,—not only a voter at elections, but an organiser and a wire-puller, and what is called the "Roman Catholic vote" has become the veritable monster of the colonial Frankenstein, Let me tell Sir C. Gavan Duffy another little colonial electioneering story, the moral of which is, I think, equally obvious. ”

“ Sir C. Gavan Duffy quotes, with marked approval, the saying of some Scotch journalist, that they (the Celtic Irish) were "the only politicians in the colony,"—meaning the only men of the rank and file who would organise, and make a sacrifice of time or money, to return a candidate or control an election.
Allowing for the picturesque exaggeration of statement often thought necessary to effective journalism, there is much truth in the remark. ”

“ Were any one to take the trouble to go through the lists of Cabinet Ministers, members of Colonial Legislatures and Municipal Councils, and to examine the names in the learned professions, and those over the great houses of business, and to glance down the roll of members of the clubs and scientific and philosophic institutions, he would find that the overwhelming majority are English. ”

“ Let me quote a paragraph of my letter for the special benefit of Sir Andrew Clarke.
"In the colonies we may have strayed in some points from what you would deem true Liberalism; but in all our legislation we have proceeded on the principle that we are one people. ”