till the Pope was proclaimed sovereign of the Australias. The new Chief Secretary had appointed Captain Standish, a gentleman whom I had never seen and probably never heard of before, to be Chief Commissioner of Police, and it was alleged in a Sandhurst newspaper that he was my nephew. Johnny Fawkner, who was called the father of the colony, because he had arrived in the second boatful of immigrants from Van Dieman's Land and outlived his compeers, exhorted his Austral Felicians to rise up against this danger. Whatever he found attributed to John Mitchel in British journals he transferred to my account; and a letter which Mr. Archer, an English gentleman, wrote to Frederick Lucas, having got published in the Tablet after Lucas's death, was republished in Melbourne, with exuberant commentaries. Mr. Archer assured Mr. Lucas that the Bishop of Melbourne heard a rumour that he was coming to Australia, and was persuaded it was the work of Providence to send him there. Mr. Fawkner assumed as a fact admitting of no dispute that when Mr. Lucas died I was put in his place, overlooking the fact that the date of Mr. Archer's letter showed that it was only despatched from Melbourne about the time when I was arriving in Australian waters. I did not condescend to make any answer to these amenities, and many ignorant persons accepted them as gospel. Several of the other Ministers were fiercely bombarded on different grounds, and the majority of the Colonists certainly arrived at the conclusion that they would not do.[1]
Our troubles were complicated by discovering that the permanent officials knew so little of the ethics of Responsible Government that they had formed a secret committee to aid the re-election of their late masters. One of the conspirators betrayed the remainder, and when the correspondence was carried to the Government I found that the chief officer of
- ↑ A note I wrote to the Bishop of Kerry, in reply to his congratulations, was published in Ireland and reprinted in Victoria at this time, from which I may quote a sentence:—"A curious fate and experience mine have been, to be howled at in both ends of the earth, by parties more asunder than the Antipodes, on diametrically opposite grounds of complaint! Yonder for betraying the interests of religion; here for being its slave and missionary. I wonder if I had stopped at the equator, would they have done me the justice in those latitudes of admitting that I belong to neither Antipodes of opinion?"
