upon with a view of inducing him to take the chair for the Brothers Redmond. He refused to have anything to do with them. He had not invited them. He would not receive them. He was not satisfied as to where the League money went to. He was grieved to hear the clergy were likely to countenance them, and believed that evil would result therefrom."
Mr. Parnell can easily find out whether this was the treatment actually accorded to his two emissaries in Melbourne. For my part, I can assure him that he would have met with no greater courtesy from Sir John O'Shanassy, even had he waited upon him personally. I admit that the sudden conversion of Mr. Gladstone, to what was hitherto simply termed "Parnellism," was not without its demoralising effect on the Australian public mind. Colonial Irishmen, who had previously been restrained, began to give vent to their racial antagonisms, and, of course, there was the usual percentage of flabby-minded and hysterical persons who were quite prepared to accept the new creed of Mr. Gladstone in lieu of what, for a better term, I must call their own convictions. But these latter were inconsiderable both in numbers and in influence. It is
