presumptuous, unauthorised, and ill-timed, that their writer was never forgiven by either friends or foes:— "For the sake of peace and harmony, I will retain my position (of leadership) during the good pleasure of my Irish supporters. They will have a leader against "Orange" ascendancy, and they can find a thousand worse than myself before they obtain one who is better; and Melbourne would be laid in ashes on the first occasion if the leadership of that warm-hearted and insulted people were transferred from an English Conservative to an Irish agitator. I have not sought my present bad eminence, but there are those in Melbourne who must consider themselves as wearing their ears through my mediation, and I wish them to remember that the unlettered mob who should crop them are not one whit more overstepping their bounds than are those wicked and heartless men, who wantonly set up the detestable flag before which I have for the present been vanquished." Though but a mere youth at the time, I had better opportunities of knowing more of the Irish feeling and Irish temperament then prevalent in Melbourne than Mr. Curr. I have as much knowledge of the same subjects now possibly as most men in the colony; therefore, calmly looking back over the current of time which a period of forty years has traversed, I can safely declare that any "English Conservative" who, from the White Settlement of the country to this day, ever fancied that he could hound on the Irish colonists, like so many wild Indians, to worry and scalp any other section of society, must be the victim of some wicked hallucination begotten by cerebral disturbance, or disarrangement of the nervous system, sufficient to exclude him from the class of beings presumed to be morally and legally accountable for their actions. And so ends a narrative of the First Parliamentary Election held in Victoria, as written by a spectator of some of the incidents therein described.
At a time when it was a matter of supreme importance to Port Phillip to be ably represented in the Legislature of New South Wales, the defeat of Mr. Curr was little short of a public calamity; and though everybody in his conscience felt it to be so, everybody was far from openly acknoyvledging it. Mr. Condell, on the opening of the Session, bade good-bye to his Little Bourke Street Malting, and set off to attend to his newly-born Senatorial duties, bearing with him to Sydney neither social weight nor ordinary ability. He was a dummy—barely a respectable one; a mere voting machine. His absence from business soon told on him, the listlessness of Sydney life to a man of his mental capacity quickly tired him, and in February, 1844, he resigned his seat. Mr. Ebden and Dr. Thomson for private reasons followed suit a few weeks after, thus extinguishing for the time all resident representation. The election for the town vacancy so created was held on the 12th March. The only candidate offering was Mr. Joseph Phelps Robinson, a Sydney merchant, and largely connected with banking interests. He was proposed by Captain Cole, seconded by Mr. H. G. Ashurst, and returned as a matter of form. Mr. Robert Fennell, a relative and his Melbourne agent, briefly returned thanks on his behalf, and all was over in ten minutes. Mr. Robinson continued to represent Melbourne until the Earl Grey election, and, with the exception of Dr. Lang, was one of the best of the many non-resident members that followed in subsequent years. He was an Irish Quaker, born on the banks of the Suire, a romantic river, in that well-known county of Southern Ireland, Tipperary. He was a liberal benefactor ofthe Mechanics' Institution and the Melbourne Hospital.
The seats vacated by Ebden and Thomson were filled the month after, and, singularly enough, called forth an acrimonious contest, got up by some of the most rampant of the Curr opponents at the first election, who, in the most ludicrous manner, changed not only sides, but colours on this occasion. No local man could be induced to stand; and as for Curr, like a modern Achilles, he retired to his tent at Abbotsford, and sulked his time away. He was therefore out of the question. Two officials of the New South Wales Government offered themselves, for there was no such awkward stumbling block as an "Officials in Parliament Act" to bar the way. They were Sir Thomas Mitchell, the Surveyor-General (the only rejected candidate at the first election), and Mr. Adolphus William Young, the Sheriff. They were influentially supported, and up to the nomination day (16th April) it was believed there would be no opposition. At the eleventh hour, however, a rival was brought forward in the person of another Sydney gentleman, Captain Maurice C. O'Connell, without either his knowledge or consent. This was a factious movement (instigated by an antipathy to the squatters), by Messrs. William Kerr, J. P. Fawkner, H. W. Mortimer, and others who yelped most loudly in the anti-Irish cry raised by Dr. Lang on behalf of Condell. These gentry now saw no inconsistency in "jumping Jim Crow," and because the "Captain" was a
